Beneath the Sun and Stars
by The Jackal Takes Whiskey
Summary: When Issei awakens in the park, he has no memory of the previous day. Something has happened to him, and he's not what he was before. The only question: Defy the sun's wishes and walk in the light, or obey its wants and embrace the shadow?
1. Chapter 1

Behind his eyes, sparks danced. And on his skin, warmth crawled.

He wasn't sure why, at first. What was this haze, this aura, in his eyelids? It shifted, churned with sparks. One second, it seemed red, then orange, then blue, then other colors, all without quite seeming to actually be those colors at all. The sparks, colored and yet not, twisted and bent about the way the wax in a lava lamp separates and rejoins like sludge, all without rhythm or rhyme. Shapes appeared and disappeared, gained coherence and lost it just as quickly in the way of someone halfway between consciousness and drowsiness.

The warmth, too, was confusing. It slid all over his skin, enveloped him in a way he absolutely detested. Had he just turned the heat up and forgotten? Or perhaps left the curtains open or something else?

And more to the point, what the hell had happened to the bed?

He felt neither sheets nor duvet over his skin, and he assumed he must've kicked them off of himself during the night. Perhaps a particularly awful nightmare? Sure, he didn't remember it, but for every dream a person remembers, a thousand go forgotten.

But the lack of cloth atop him wasn't all that was wrong – the mattress seemed to have lost all of its padding, and his pillow was nowhere to be found, either. His neck was stiff and part of his skull was sore from resting directly against the surface.

Then his arms shifted, and he felt something else.

Dirt. Not much of it, but dirt. And what lightly scraped his arm from beneath at his motions was the rough touch of stone.

Issei Hyoudou's eyes finally dragged open, and he saw the reasons for all of these things.

"What the hell…?" Issei murmured, barely aware that he'd spoken at all.

He wasn't in bed. That wasn't much of a surprise, really. Nor was his knowledge of where he was, either – just a secluded plaza in the local park that Issei often used as a shortcut on his way back from the mall.

No, the real surprise was his being here at all. How the hell had he fallen asleep out here?

Issei slowly pushed himself to stand on stiff legs, head throbbing and throat parched. But neither of those things were what he was paying attention to.

He squinted hard against the sun, wondering when the hell it had gotten so bright. And… _unpleasant_.

Issei was a teenager and spent a lot of his time in darkened rooms, that much was true, but he didn't hate the sun. Or, at the very least, he hadn't before this morning.

Now that opinion was being reconsidered. The once-friendly rays of light thrown off of that ball of gas in the sky seemed hateful, now, cruel and taunting. No longer did they welcome him out into the day; now, they seemed want nothing but to drive him into the dark and keep him there.

Even as he stood there, Issei's eyes began to water, but as he took a slow breath, he noticed something else he didn't remember.

Every single scent was far more intense than Issei could ever recall it being. The bittersweet scent of the cherry blossom trees around him was now almost noxious and choking. Beneath it, there was the unmistakable earthy scent of the dirt they grew in, and mixed into it was the scent of…

...water?

Issei's head turned, and as it did, he saw the fountain sitting directly in the center of the secluded plaza. He stared at it for a long while, at its plain-looking spigot that extended several meters into the air. At the water that flowed from the spigot's top and into the basin below.

Issei stared into the source of the scent, lost in both confusion and wonder. Confusion at his own ability to smell the things he did, wonder at how he had missed it before.

Had his unplanned night out in the park somehow cleared out a sinus problem he somehow hadn't known about?

Issei shook his head even as the thought crossed his mind. It was a ridiculous proposal, he knew it, and discarded it almost immediately. Whatever the reason for this, _that_ wasn't it.

But if not that, then what?

Issei's mind was drawing a blank, and he quickly shook his head.

It was what it was. Issei didn't know the _why_, and that question certainly left him quite interested, but he tried to shove it to the back of his mind. The answer wasn't going to just appear conveniently in his brain, after all.

As he turned his back to the sun and his head down to the shadow he cast, his brow furrowed as he tried to piece together a more basic question: What the hell was he doing out here?

Issei's fingers slowly and unconsciously reached up to dig into the side of his skull. And as he thought it over, the further his fingernails bit into his head.

He remembered getting up to his alarm. Going to school. Playing video games and watching porn at Matsuda's house after classes let out for the day. Returning home, eating dinner with his family, doing homework and then going to bed.

At no point in-between then and now had he come anywhere near this park.

Issei shivered despite, or perhaps, in some strange way, _because_ of the sun's glaring down on him. At its insistence that he leave its rays and cease insulting it by its presence.

His fingers dropped from the side of his head, falling by their own will and digging through his pocket. They searched for a single heart-wracking instant before finding what they sought and pulling it out.

And as Issei opened his phone, he gave a hard swallow, saliva trickling down a throat that screamed for hydration.

It was quarter to eight on a Sunday morning.

But when Issei had gone to sleep, it had been just past ten on a Friday night.

* * *

Issei took one slow breath after another as he walked, trying to keep his heart rate from going to madness even as it threatened to leap out of his chest. He was having little success with that, and the constant breaths of the trees and earth wasn't helping.

After seeing the day in his phone, Issei had immediately decided to go home. He didn't have much of a plan beyond that, but to have a plan _to_ that point was comforting. And as he almost always did when coming this direction, he'd taken the shortcut. It cut off about half a kilometer from the walk back, and while perhaps not all that much, all things considered, anything that would shorten the distance between him and his house would be much appreciated right about now.

Alas, he hadn't considered his suddenly-improved sense of smell, and the once-pleasant smell of the woodland patch was now inviting in the first twinges of a headache. The woody scent, mixed with the earth's was a pungent concoction now, and Issei desperately hoped this enhanced sense of smell would go away sooner than later.

That hope was increased further as he reached the small fence one had to leap to get back to the sidewalk. Even as Issei approached, the combined smell of gasoline, diesel, stone and slightly warm tar nearly made him retch. As he walked, the brunette silently wondered to himself if Kuoh had always smelled this bad and he just hadn't noticed.

But as he approached an intersection he needed to cross and checked both ways, his thoughts about the smell of the tarmac, the continued wrath of the sun's rays and the increasingly-hard-to-ignore parchedness in his throat were all shoved to the back of his mind by the hum of a motor.

On instinct, Issei looked both ways, trying to discern the direction the car was coming from. But he saw absolutely nothing there, even as the grinding sound of the car's engine grew louder and louder.

Issei spun around, looking at the sleepy, empty street in front of and behind him, but still no car appeared to claim ownership of the growling engine that grew still louder in Issei's ears.

Issei's teeth ground in his gums. That engine, wherever it was, wasn't getting any quieter, and the headache Issei had been getting from the smell of the tarmac, trash cans and other assorted nastiness proved to be bolstered just as much by its roar.

Then, after nearly thirty seconds of looking around, a perfectly normal sedan rounded the corner to Issei's right. And as it did so, the roar of the engine suddenly became much louder than it already was.

Vaguely, Issei realized that the hum of the engine's pistons and cranks and whatever else wasn't all that was there. Beneath the roar of the engine, he could hear the grinding rumble of the tires as they spun beneath the metal frame, the spitting choke of the exhaust as it pumped foul-smelling fumes into the air. All of the sounds of the vehicle coalesced together, and the resulting low-pitched screech grew ever-louder as the car drove closer to Issei.

Intolerably louder, as it turned out.

As the car drove through the intersection, Issei found himself with his hands involuntarily clamped over his ears like a small child.

Then, as it passed him, the sound of it began to finally and mercifully quiet down, and after almost a minute, Issei could finally hear clearly again. And when he could, Issei became aware of something else, something so obvious that he was rather shocked he hadn't noticed it prior.

It wasn't just that the sun was more hateful or that Kuoh smelled much worse. The entire world had suddenly become louder. It was as though a particularly petty and vindictive god had gone to some mystical dial and turned all the sounds of the world up by several notches on the speakers. Even as he crossed the street, Issei could hear the lousy-smelling wind blow in a gentle gust that sounded like a full-force gale. The few people he saw as he walked back seemed to be stamping their feet with every step, and every time a car passed him, Issei just about wanted to slice his own ears off.

All the while, the infuriated rays of the sun incessantly cut at his skin, and the parchedness of his throat only grew more aggravating.

* * *

With his senses kicked well past overdrive and the sun itself having decided that it wanted him dead, the normally twenty-minute walk from Issei's house to the mall took more than twice that long. Eventually, however, Issei did manage to drag himself back to his house. He'd hoped to slip inside unnoticed, pretend that he'd just come back late.

His mother, naturally, was standing directly inside the front door.

"Issei Hyoudou!" she snapped, in the way parents do to get their child's attention. As parents also do, she didn't let him get a single word of explanation before immediately plowing ahead. "Where _were_ you last night? Your father and I were worried sick! And don't tell me you were at a friends' house! We called both of your friends and neither of them had seen you! Your father's out driving all over town looking for you and-"

Issei was nodding along with his mother's worried ranting, but he was already starting to check out mentally. As he did, he noticed something else, something perhaps odder than every single thing he'd experienced since waking up an hour or so ago.

His mother smelled good. Better than good. Quite delectable, in fact, but not in the way one would expect. She didn't smell good because she and her clothes were well-cleaned and because of perfume. Certainly, Issei's nose made it clear to him that both of those things were true, but that wasn't the smell Issei's mind was so fond of; if anything, that was actually rather annoying. While it wasn't near as strong as the tarmac and trash of outside, the close quarters meant the comparatively weak scents of soap and perfume were still too powerful for Issei's liking.

No, the lovely smell was of something else. A wonderful, salty smell, like a breeze of the ocean, yet with a metallic tang mixed in.

Only when he noticed she had stopped rambling after several minutes did Issei come back to reality.

"Well?" she demanded, brown eyes that her son had inherited leaving Issei feeling as though he were being scanned by an electron microscope. As mother's eyes do.

"Umm…" Issei said, fidgeting slightly. "I… fell asleep in the park…"

His mother's eyes narrowed. "You… fell asleep. In the park."

Issei nodded, eyes darting from side to side.

"And you really expect me to believe that?"

Issei remained silent at the question that was already answered by his mother's tone.

"Fine," his mother said, glaring at him harsher than the sun had been. "Lie to me. But I _will_ find out, Issei, and when I do, you're going to wish you'd just told me the truth. Your father will hear about this, too, once he gets home!"

Issei nodded in that submissive way expected of a child being scolded by an angry parent. But as she walked away, a rather dry thought wormed its way into his head.

_Be sure you tell me as soon as you figure it out. I'd love to know, too._

Once his mother had gotten out of his face and stomped off upstairs, Issei walked to the kitchen.

Now that he was out of the sun's rays and in the security of his own home, Issei sought to do something about that dry throat.

For just a moment, he fished around in the cabinet before snatching a glass. Then, he went to the tap, and watched the water flow.

* * *

Issei's stomach churned as he stared down into the partially-full cup.

Six. Six damn cups of water he'd drunk now, and they weren't small cups. And yet his throat still felt dry as ever, maybe even worse.

But Issei stubbornly fought off the queasiness in his gut, and turned up the glass, trying to force yet more water into his system.

As he downed the last of the water, Issei made a split-second decision that it would be his last glass for a while. His stomach kept rocking about, its own little storm threatening to billow into a rather foul tsunami if jostled too much.

Slowly, steadily, he walked out of the kitchen, back into the front room and towards the stairs…

…just in time to nearly crash into his father.

"Issei!" his father yelped, but the cry didn't have much alarm. "You're okay?"

"Yeah," Issei said. Before he could continue, however, his father kept speaking.

"I guess your mother already screamed at you?"

Issei nodded, and his father returned the gesture, his expression sympathetic.

"Moms are like that. Mine did the same to me when _I_ stayed out the first time." He winked. "No need to tell me what you were doing. I know the sorts of things guys your age get up to when we're not around."

Issei swallowed and said nothing, but to his relief, his father didn't seem to notice as he treaded up the same stairs his mother had gone.

Once Issei heard his parent's door open and close, he followed his father's track.

* * *

As he walked up the stairs, Issei's plan was to go to his room, draw the curtains back, turn all the lights off and lie down for a while.

Then his stomach gave a particularly nasty shake, and Issei was left going straight towards the bathroom. The churning grew worse with every step and second, and even as Issei threw the door open, it felt as though his stomach would start erupting. Just as it reached a fever pitch, Issei leaned down over the toilet, sure that every single drop of water he'd just drunk was going to come right back out, along with whatever else might be in there.

Nothing. Nothing came up. At the last possible instant, his stomach and the storm going on inside it subsided.

For a while, Issei stayed knelt there. Not moving, sure that his stomach was working against him to fake him out and erupt when he was far from somewhere that the result could be easily disposed of. But as the time passed, Issei's fright over that began to wane. There were no signs of the nausea returning, no hint that everything in his stomach.

Even as he stood once the while was up, Issei began to feel just a little better… even if the dryness in his throat and inexplicable, unquenchable thirst refused to abate.

He turned. And froze when he looked in the mirror.

Issei couldn't figure out quite why at first. The young man in the mirror seemed to be the same person who'd greeted him so many times before. He had Issei's same face, the same perverted grin and the same clothes he was used to wearing.

As his eyes kept looking over the young man in the mirror, the young man in the glass' eyes matching his every movement in perfect reverse, Issei noticed something.

Was he going crazy, or was he paler than he was before?

Issei blinked as his left hand ran down his right arm and his mirror twin's right ran down his left. He stared as the skin blanched and then returned some of its color, but it didn't help him make any judgement. Issei had never been the darkest-skinned individual, and if he _had_ grown paler, he couldn't quite tell.

Issei shook his head, his mind idly rambling to itself that he just might be going a little bit crazy.

The teen started to turn from the mirror, and then froze once more when the sensation hit him again. That sensation that there was something wrong with the young man in the mirror.

He turned back again and looked at himself once more. He went somewhat more in-depth this time, looking over every exposed bit of skin that he could.

But that turned up just as inconclusive as before.

Issei leaned toward the mirror a bit more, and for just a moment, his eyes and the eyes of the young man in the mirror crossed.

And then he saw it. And when he did, both Issei's eyes and the eyes of the one in the mirror widened in perfect unison.

When Issei had gone to sleep at ten o'clock on Friday evening, his eyes had been the same earthy brown that his mother had.

The young man who stared back at him had eyes that almost _glowed_ in a rich, ruby red. And as his and the young man in the mirror's jaws fell open, each caught sight of the extended canines in the other's mouth.


	2. Chapter 2

They stayed that way for a long time, those two boys – one a reflection and one not. Each stared into the other's open mouth, even while something tried to crawl up their throats into the freedom of the open air. It might have been a scream, or maybe just terrified whimpers.

Whatever it was, it didn't get very far out of either boy's lungs before something had seized onto it. Clamped it like a fist closed around a mouse. Grabbed without crushing, leaving the mouse to feebly struggle all it pleased with no real chance of actually escaping its confinement.

Fear? Shock, perhaps? Whatever name that fist in each of them might have borne, it kept the sound paralyzed and locked away inside of them. Kept _them_ paralyzed, in a way. But even if that fist hadn't rooted each one of them to their given place, neither could have summoned the mental focus to take a single step away from the mirror.

Every newton of the two's mental energies were focused on what extended from two specific points in their gums. The crimson eyes, shocking as they might have been to them, were almost forgotten within seconds of seeing them because of what was in their mouths.

Fangs. Issei Hyoudou had fangs.

They weren't as impressive as the word might make them sound. They weren't more than perhaps a centimeter-and-a-half longer than either teen's original canines might have been. Two at most. They certainly weren't the massive, bestial things possessed by creatures in terrible movies or children's stories. The fangs didn't extend down past his chin like some grotesque display. They fit comfortably in his mouth, and in fact didn't even pick at the insides of his gums within his closed jaw.

But they were still much larger than the canines he'd had just two days before, and that was enough. They didn't need to extend to the lengths of the saber-toothed cat's to make their mark, to seize him and terrify him in one sweeping gesture.

The real Issei and the one in the glass were captivated by those bits of sharpened enamel, both for their shape and their implications. They stared at one another, each partly fascinated, partly terrified by what they saw. Thoughts ran wild in their heads, jumping from point to point and slowly, ever so slowly, the puzzle pieces began to come together.

The sun's unflinching hatred. The sounds and smells. The undying thirst in his throat. And now…

Only when a new sound, a sound the fist couldn't restrain, came in did that little mouse in the boy's throats stop struggling. Only then did the little mouse allow itself to be dragged back into the lungs of the teenager with the brown hair and his red-eyed duplicate in the glass. Only then did Issei Hyoudou snap back to reality, and the puzzle pieces fell back down, not fully assembled.

The new sound was a simple knock on the door of the bathroom. A second or two later, it was joined by more of them, and then by the voice of Issei's father.

"Issei? Are you almost done in there?"

"Uh… uh, yeah!" Issei said, voice trembling slightly as his heart thudded and he struggled to keep his breathing in check. "I'm, uh, I'm just washing my hands." For auditory proof of that, Issei flicked the tap handle.

His father gave an appreciative grunt at the sound of running water. A moment or so later, Issei's suddenly-enhanced hearing told the teen that Mr. Hyoudou was trudging back down the hall.

But even as Issei gave his hands a quick rinsing, he did so thoughtlessly. Cleanliness and hygiene were the farthest thing from his mind. As he cleared out of the bathroom, his thoughts began to bounce off of one another once more as he tried once more to recall the previous night.

Issei's teeth ground as he, again, drew a complete blank. Not one image or fragment of the previous evening would shine itself under the light. Not that Issei could really blame it, of course. After his little walk home, Issei himself had no desire to expose himself to the rays of the sun, either.

As he dried his hands off, he turned and looked in the mirror once last time, at the young man who stared back at him.

The same crimson eyes gave him back his worried stare.

* * *

Issei left the bathroom with a head full of fuzz.

Nothing about _any_ of this made sense. Not his senses or his appearance. The answer that jumped into his mind as those jigsaw pieces had come together was nonsensical, because they _didn't exist_.

But when he tried to come up with another explanation, Issei drew the same blank he'd drawn before. Nothing _else_ would explain his sense, the eyes or the fangs. Nothing that he could think of, anyway.

Those thoughts chased each other for the entire twenty-two steps between the bathroom on the hallway and Issei's bedroom and up to Issei's opening the door.

Issei knew that his room probably wasn't the best-smelling place in the house, but now he found out just how true that actually was. The stench that wafted from Issei's personal lair was nothing short of stupendous. The reek of sweat mixed with the vile fragrance of general body odor and the stench of what was no doubt traces of another, altogether less appropriate-to-discuss liquid slammed into Issei's nose with such force that he almost doubled over from retching.

Luckily for him, the choppy waters of his queasy stomach remained calm enough that he was able to keep things under control on _that_ front. He didn't need to add the smell of his own vomit to this foul concoction.

After a few moments, Issei turned and staggered back down the hallway, a decision having been made nearly the instant he'd breathed the air in the room. About halfway between his room and the bathroom, he turned and opened up the closet. From it, he extracted a number of bottles of cleaning chemicals, paper towels, a vacuum cleaner, the rug scrubber, garbage bags and several other implements.

Then, he turned again. Walked back down the hall. Took a breath of fresh air.

And stepped inside to begin the war on stench.

* * *

He started first with the most obvious thing – the dirty clothes. Those were tossed in the washing machine with enough detergent and fabric softener to make a dirty rag sitting in pond scum for a year smell like a spring breeze.

Next came the bed sheets. Those were stripped from the mattress almost as soon as Issei returned from the washing machine. He stacked those on top of said machine, as much trying to get any source of smell whatsoever out of the room as set them up for later.

After that, Issei began to rifle through what was on his desk. Every single broken pencil, wadded-up piece of paper, tiny crumbs of food and anything else he hadn't previously bothered to clean out – all of it went in the trash. Whatever remained was thoroughly wiped down with rags sprayed with dusting chemicals.

His closet came next. Issei tore everything out of it, throwing away a good chunk of what was in it in the process; most of it was junk he hadn't used in years and wouldn't miss, anyway. What was left – and it wasn't much – was pulled out. From there, every item was cleaned, disinfected, and otherwise washed. The racks and inside walls of the closet received the same treatment.

Issei made sure to slide the box of particularly delightful porn out of sight of a cursory glance.

Once he was done with that, the brunette went back to the washing machine, transferring his clothes to the dryer and sheets to the washer.

As soon as he finished up in there, Issei went to the window and scrubbed both the glass and the sill until each was smooth and silk. Luckily for Issei, the sun only directly faced his window in the early morning.

His door, desk chair, bed frame and every other bit of furniture in the room received the same treatment. Even his alarm clock was thoroughly wiped down.

From there, Issei gave the walls a scrubbing, cleaning off a few minor stains and leaving them appearing almost freshly painted. He returned for a third time to the dryer after that, tossing his sheets and duvet in to be stripped of their moisture after extracting his clothes.

After getting down on his hands and knees to scrub every single baseboard in the room until they nearly shined, Issei turned to the last two tools he'd brought along with him.

Issei had intended to vacuum the entire room. To clean every single corner of every inch of dirt that might still remain. He couldn't imagine that there would be much, considering the more-than-a-trash bag's worth of filthy towels he'd thrown away at this point; all the same, he wanted every single ounce he could remove _gone_. Even though his nose had grown used to the foul smell in a few minutes and was more concerned with the powerful cleaning chemicals he was using, Issei wanted to make sure that his room didn't _stay_ awful-smelling.

Alas, he'd failed to consider one minor aspect of most vacuum cleaners that would be of great interest to another sense that had been enhanced recently.

As soon as he turned the vacuum on, Issei's ears were immediately assaulted by a screaming whine that left him desperately turning it back off just to give mercy to his ears.

He tried again, and he still couldn't bear it. A third time yielded the same result, and at that point, Issei went digging through his desk.

For a few moments, he thought he'd thrown them away. Then, he spied the pair of earplugs, still unopened, that he'd won in some game years ago and haphazardly thrown into the bowels of one of his drawers to go unused. With relish, he ripped the plastic and cardboard apart and stuffed the cylindrical bits of foam into his ears.

The vacuum was still hard on his ears with the earplugs in, but much less so. Not so much that Issei couldn't use it, and use it he did – every single square centimeter of carpet that it could reach was subjected to its rolling, sucking attention. The hoses on the same, with all their little attachments, searched every crevice and corner they could possibly reach. That just left one final place that it could reach quite so easily.

Issei had pulled aside his bed a few times before, of course, usually to look for a magazine or visual novel that he had borrowed from Matsuda or Motohoma. It was usually an intensive effort, one that left him with sweat trickling down his brow.

So as one might expect, Issei was immensely surprised when his bed moved with what was, from his perspective, a light tug. Not just move; it practically _glided_ across the floor when he put any strain into his muscles.

And for just a moment, Issei remembered the red eyes of the young man in the mirror. Without any prompting, his tongue instinctively flicked around the inside of his mouth.

He could still feel them. The fangs.

Issei gave a vigorous shake of his head, desperately trying to toss the images out of his mind as though they might conveniently slide out through his ears.

As he sorted through what little was under the bed, he kept doing that. Perhaps a little too quickly, he finished.

The screeching of the vacuum helped to drown his thoughts. The scrubbing of the carpet followed on from there, with Issei moving the bed back into place with the same curious ease with which he'd initially dislodged it.

A quick trip back to the dryer left him with his bedsheets, which Issei spread across the mattress.

It was just as he was smearing out a few creases in the duvet that a knock at the door made him jump.

His head snapped around to see his father. "A little jumpy, are we?" he asked, a slight grin on his face.

"Sorry," Issei mumbled. "I, uh… was just finishing up."

"Good timing," his father replied. "Your mother sent me up to let you know that dinner's ready."

"Already? Isn't it a little…" The rest of that sentence died in Issei's throat as he looked over at his alarm clock.

It was quarter to six, and through the window Issei could see that the sky had turned dark blue and purple as the sun slipped down. He'd been at the cleaning process for nearly seven hours.

"Oh, uh, thanks," Issei said.

His father's head snapped around, taking a quick look around with a hint of the smile from before still tugging on his lips. "Looks good, Issei. Nice job."

"Thanks." Issei gave a smile at that, but just before his lips could part, Issei's better judgement forced them to remain closed.

* * *

To say the least, Issei didn't find dinner a particularly enjoyable experience.

It was quite obvious that his mother was still angry at him for having vanished overnight. Every word she spoke was intensely terse, filled with the sort of quiet hostility that a parent uses to make clear that they haven't forgotten their child's latest screw-up just yet.

Issei's father, bless his heart, tried to get a conversation going, but nothing seemed to stick. Issei didn't want to open his mouth more than he had to, and looking either his mother or father in the eye was straight out. One ill-timed gaze, one particularly attentive moment on either of their parts and the brunette knew he'd be up to his elbows in trouble. Because there _was_ no explanation for what was in his mouth. There _was_ no explanation for his eyes.

And there was no explanation for something else, something that wasn't visible from the outside.

The dryness in his throat.

Issei's marathon deep-clean of his entire room had started off as a way to expunge the odors that came with a teenage boy's living in it and not always being the cleanest of people. But it had had another effect, this one altogether unintentional: It had kept his mind busy. His focus had been entirely on scrubbing every bit of dirt and filth out of his room, _not_ on his memory and the changes to his physical appearance.

With that out of the way, there was nothing else to distract him from the young man in the mirror.

Because, he supposed, his thoughts were wrong. Sitting at that table, his mind started working on the jigsaw puzzle again, and there weren't many pieces left.

There _was_ an explanation, and the more Issei thought about it, the more likely it seemed. Issei also had no doubt that if he told anyone about it, he'd be tossed into a mental hospital.

* * *

Without much conversation, dinner went by quite fast. When it finished, Issei thanked his mother for the food, as expected. Also as expected, he asked if she needed help with the dishes, and, yet again, as expected, she told him she didn't.

They went through that routine every day. He had been asking every night they'd had dinner together since he was twelve if she needed help. Never did she need it, but never did she grow annoyed with his offers.

After being excused from the table, Issei walked back up the stairs to his own bedroom (to his relief, the air was at least moderately breathable, now).

Issei had had some plans made when he walked up the stairs. He'd intended to study for an exam he had coming up, then maybe watch porn.

As soon as he saw the bed, however, all of those plans collapsed as Issei felt an unnatural exhaustion surge. It washed through him like a tsunami, crashing through every bit of discipline and logic that told him to stay awake longer.

Within just a few minutes, Issei was asleep beneath freshly-washed sheets.

* * *

_He was alone._

_ And then, his eyes claimed, he was not._

_As he walked towards it, Issei stared at the figure, standing far away down this endless hall of stone. It was lit by no lamps or electric lights, and the stone itself pulsated, as though it were a living thing's beating heart._

_ But no matter how long he walked, the figure did not come any closer to him. Even as he began to run, he could see it raise an arm and beckon him. A whisper filled his ears, bouncing off the walls of this corridor to nowhere._

_ Then it turned. Vanished into the shadow down the ceaseless hall of quivering stone._

_ Issei raised his arm, and something grabbed it. A shriek, insane and full of rage, filled his ears._

_ After an instant, he saw that the thing that had grabbed his arm was some clawed thing, biting into his flesh. But even as blood flowed down his hand in a raging torrent, he felt no pain._

_ There was fear, of course, a little bit of it, especially when another limb came down and seized his torso and tore it open._

* * *

For a few moments after Issei's eyes dragged open, he didn't remember much of anything about the previous day. He had no recollection of the young man in the mirror. And when he did recall those things, he thought, for just a few moments that they themselves had been a dream.

But then he swallowed, and he felt the dryness in his throat. Felt that unquenchable thirst that seemed to get worse every time he paid attention to it.

A slight flick of the tongue, and he felt the fangs.

He sat up, heart beginning to throb again as he thought it over once more. He barely noticed that it was a quarter past four in the morning and that he ought to be trying to get back to sleep.

It was a minor movement that caught his eye – one very slight twitch of something in the room. It was practically coincidence that he'd seen it at all, that little shadow on the floor.

But he did see it, and stared at the rectangle on the floor. It fluttered this way and that, twitching as though blown about by a gust of wind.

It took a few seconds for Issei to realize that the rectangle sat directly in the center of a patch of silvery light. The light from his window.

Issei looked up, and he saw it. Saw the tiny piece of paper taped to his window.

In an instant, he'd thrown the covers off of himself. A few seconds after, he was at the window, unlocking it and reaching out to snatch the piece of paper from the exterior glass.

And in the square of moonlight, he read the text on the paper.

_Do not resist the craving, or it will drive you mad._

– _Lady Morrigan_

* * *

_**AN: Has anyone else here ever cleaned out their room and found a bunch of crap they didn't know they still owned and will literally never need or want again? That's not just me, is it?**_


	3. Chapter 3

Standing there in that patch of moonlight, Issei stared down at the note in his hand.

Sleepiness did not come with earliness. His eyes didn't droop as he stared at the piece of paper he held. Or perhaps that wasn't true; perhaps Issei _had_ been sleepy before he had read the words on the note that had turned up on the outside of his window.

Any exhaustion that might or might not have existed was forgotten now, vanished and replaced by the ink on the parchment.

_Do not resist the craving, or it will drive you mad._

Issei read that sentence over and over and over again. Who might have written it and signed their name to it was forgotten for those minutes as he mutely processed the note in a rapid, seemingly-unending loop.

But perhaps that's wrong.

Because for all the times Issei read the note, in reality, he only truly _read_ it once. His eyes darted back and forth, yes, but the motion wasn't driven by any conscious thought. No rationality or reason or thought went into just moving that pair of organs set into his head, and given that case, how surprising is it that his rational mind wasn't bothering to acknowledge what the eyes were sending it?

_Do not resist the craving, or it will drive you mad._

Issei supposed that that sentence should have scared him - both for its explicit meaning and the implication the very existence of the paper it was written on carried.

But there wasn't any fear. Just... numbness. A cold, whispered, dead feeling, no different than the feeling that the bone-chilling winds of winter leave on skin left exposed too long.

It was only the briefest moment of lucidity that brought the fact that he'd dropped the note to the floor to his conscious attention. After a moment, he caught sight of it a meter or so away; the paper, as paper is wont to do, caught the air like a kite and sailed just the slightest step from where it had dropped from.

Issei made no move to pick it up. His eyes had no desire whatsoever to slide over the ink on the page for the hundredth time, and his conscious mind had no will to force the meaty suit it called a body over to it to do so.

In fact, after a minute or so, Issei joined the paper on the scrubbed carpet floor.

As he sat there, still in that patch of brilliant silver light, the words played over and over again in his mind.

_Do not resist the craving, or it will drive you mad._

In the first fractions of a moment after reading it, Issei hadn't known what to make of what the note said. But as the seconds ticked by, the pieces of the mental jigsaw puzzle he'd started the previous day fell into place in his mind.

And now he knew. Or at least he thought he did.

But perhaps that was wrong, too.

All things considered, was Issei truly surprised by the picture that mental jigsaw puzzle formed? Hadn't he known already, regardless of whether or not he'd been able to bring himself to believe it?

Even as the questions came to his mind, Issei knew the answer to each one.

Seated there on the carpet and in the moon, Issei's mind darted back over the previous day. He remembered the smells and sounds of the outside world. Of the sun's wrath on his skin. Issei supposed that he'd known something was wrong, fundamentally wrong, even then.

He remembered the lovely smell rolling off of his mother, that fresh, salt-and-iron scent. Even as he looked back at it, Issei knew that he'd just been denying the obvious. He'd known what he was smelling. He'd known that he wanted to consume it. Feel it roll across his tongue and down his throat. His unconscious mind might not have let him comprehend it before now, but it had been there, burrowing underneath his conscious thoughts like a worm beneath fresh soil.

And then he'd seen the mirror and the young man who'd stood in it. He'd seen that the young man he knew had been replaced by someone else, someone who looked like him but differed in just a few crucial details.

He'd seen the eyes, the fangs and felt the dryness in his throat that still stung at him, even now. And right then and there, Issei had known. Not just known with a gut feeling. He'd been _certain_. The rational side of his mind had fought back against the notion, but it was a battle that had been lost before it started.

So as he sat there, in that pale moonlight shining in the through his bedroom window, his thoughts finally gained a form the world understood. They coalesced, pushed themselves together, and in three short words, finally made their mark.

"I'm a vampire."

Issei wasn't consciously aware that he'd spoken at first. He sat there in the dark, unmoving and disengaged with the world around him for some time. "Some time", that is, because he didn't know. A few heartbeats? A few minutes? An hour? A day? All those times might as well have been the same for all that Issei was paying attention.

One neuron at a time, though, Issei's mind began to pick up on itself and its own action. It wondered about the sound that it had instructed his body to create. Debated and argued with itself, differing positions being taken by a council inside his head. All of the debate, all the argument, flowed beneath the surface, just out of the reach of his higher mind.

It wasn't the higher mind that drove him to speak again.

"I'm a vampire."

The words were slightly louder this time, more consciously said. Each syllable was analyzed, examined and pulled apart as it left his mouth, crawled into his ears and returned from whence it came.

In a manner almost experimental, he said it again.

"I'm a vampire."

The third time came out easier than the second or first. It wasn't any intense feeling of relief that made it so. No weight dropped from Issei's shoulders as he spoke. Warmth didn't flood through him, he didn't let out a sigh of contentment. No disbelieving, instinctual shock tingled at his nerves.

On some level, he supposed, his mind _still_ didn't want to believe it. But as he repeated the three words to himself over and over again, Issei felt something else, perhaps something more valuable than a feeling of relief or relaxation.

No more and no less than a sensation of slow acceptance of reality as it stood.

That was, in itself, strange. He vaguely wondered if he _should_ be frightened or scared or shocked in a way that he simply wasn't.

Issei slowly shook his head as the repeated phrase came out of his mouth again.

At the tenth repetition, Issei found himself standing up of his body's own will. His eyes watched as his legs carried him to the window and the former stared through the glass.

Issei couldn't quite say just what he was looking for, even as he stared out into the streets that had been shrouded beneath a particularly dense fog. Perhaps a glimpse of someone else, for some sign that this and the previous day were all some multilayered dream from which he'd yet to awaken?

The brunette held that position for several minutes, looking at the town beyond the glass, as one mystery shuffled out of his mind and was replaced with another. It wasn't the identity of the person who wrote the note. _That_ he already had, or at least an alias. The writer, this "Lady Morrigan", had been kind enough to sign her writings. The mystery was more fundamental in nature, yet more confounding by far.

The note had been on the outside window, and yet Issei's bedroom was on the second floor.

* * *

Acceptance itself brought Issei no peace.

He'd eventually crawled back under the covers, hoping to rest a little while longer, but the questions that the world had posed to him left him no chance to actually sleep away the two or so hours before he'd need to be up.

And eventually, as the night sky vanished and the unwelcome sun began crawling in through his window, Issei gave up the effort. He rose a second time, once again pushed the blankets off of himself and stood up from his bed.

He supposed it was just a lost part of him, the humanity that ran his mind, that drew him over the window. But as he drew close, his eyes squinted and he let out a slight breath.

The sunlight stung his bare skin, just as it had the previous day. But as he stood in the light, Issei came to a new realization: The pain wasn't as bad as it had been. It was still uncomfortable, but the sun's hatred seemed to have cooled into a more simple dislike.

Issei frowned as he pulled down the window shade and wrapped his room in the gentleness of darkness.

He wasn't surprised in the least to find that he could easily navigate his room even without the aid of the sun or artificial lights. Nearly all legends of vampires, of course, place them as being most at home in the night, but there was something else. A comfort, a warmth, that Issei's human mind associated with the sun, was there, in that darkness.

But Issei knew he couldn't remain in his room until the sun went down as he would have preferred to. Regardless of what he was now, he still had a few distinctly human obligations.

A couple of minutes later, Issei had changed into his school uniform. When he opened the door, Issei caught the distinct scent of his mother cooking breakfast, and a small smile creased his lips. He was _very_ familiar with that smell, had become so long ago. And for the first time since he'd had it, Issei was happy for his radically improved sense of smell.

But beneath that happiness, there was an unfamiliar frustration, a cry for something else. A scream from some part of him that didn't _want_ his mother's cooking. It wasn't his conscious mind that complained.

Or was that the wrong conflict? Was it something else, he wondered?

Then he swallowed, and the parched feeling in his throat came back. And in an instant, Issei understood.

His stomach wanted food; even as he stood there with the door open, he could feel it rumble and growl in his chest. But it wanted something else, too, and wanted that much more.

_Do not resist the craving, or it will drive you mad._

Issei knew what craving the note spoke of, and he shuddered. Wonderful as the thought of indulging it was to a part of him, it was also true that Issei didn't know that part of his mind very well. It was a new resident of the house he called his brain, and the current occupant wasn't exactly comfortable with its new roommate. The latter had no idea what the former might be planning, of how it might go about coexisting with its old owner, or if it wanted to slit the old owner's throat while it slept.

But all his mental discomfort and all his moral queasiness at the idea didn't affect the slowly-worsening dryness in his throat. It didn't lessen his thirst for blood.

Issei grit his teeth and gave a fierce shake of his head even as the note's words crashed around inside his mind.

The blood could wait. He wasn't crazy. Not yet, anyway. And as far as he was concerned, he could deal with the thirst for a while yet.

The brunette took a long breath and let it out just as slowly, before giving himself a quick nod.

But even as he walked out of his room and towards the wonderful smells coming from the kitchen, there was still an unease that he did everything in his power to ignore.

* * *

If nothing else, breakfast with his mother and father helped to ease Issei's anxiousness about that question just the slightest bit. His mother's anger seemed to have been cooled by the night's rest, and now she was just as chipper and happy as she usually was at the breakfast table. His father's behavior was nothing out of the ordinary, either.

For his own part, Issei tried to focus on the smell of his father's shaving cream and the smell of his mother's perfume as the teen offered bits of conversation and discussion. It kept the smell of the blood parading through his parent's veins from taking center stage in his thoughts.

The last thing he wanted was to be lulled into some sort of trance and bite at their necks or whatever. Issei had spent many hours coming up with plausible explanations for many things, but he knew that that particular instance was completely out of his reach.

Breakfast was, overall, a relaxed and normal affair, and once it had concluded, and Issei fetched his bags. A farewell to his parents later, and Issei stepped into the morning light.

The light wasn't gentle in the slightest, and for the first time that he could remember, Issei buttoned up his jacket. After all, the bits of him that stung were only those stretches of skin that lay exposed to the sun. Beneath the fabric, his skin was calm. Normal. More importantly, it didn't feel as though it were being stabbed with hundreds of needles all at once. His palms and skin were the only bits of skin left exposed. He could do little about either, and resigned himself to bearing the discomfort as best he could.

It was one of many irritations and aggravations, he supposed. Because Kuoh smelled just as bad this morning as it had on his trek home the previous day. Not only that, it was _much_ louder; he could only suppose that it was because it was Monday morning as opposed to Sunday.

That wasn't to say that Issei reacted to the passage of cars to the same degree he had the previous day. Never did he quite get to the point of slamming his hands over his ears, though he came quite close when vehicles larger-than-normal cars rumbled by. At most, Issei reacted with a deep grimace, and that was as much from the stench of the exhaust as the scream of the engines.

His pace was faster than the previous day's, enough so that he arrived at the gates of Kuoh Academy with just over ten minutes before he needed to be in class.

If he'd known quite what awaited him when he'd arrived, Issei wouldn't have rushed.

If the inside of Issei's room smelled bad to his vampire's nose, the hallways of the school and the grounds smelled like a septic tank.

It wasn't as though the custodians and janitorial staff hadn't done their due diligence and cleaned up the school to a standard that no doubt vastly exceeded Issei's own room. No, the real problem was the students.

Put gently, a great number of them did not take the care to keep their clothes and bodies quite as clean as they could have.

Put slightly less gently, many of them could stand to use _much_ more soap.

That wasn't universally true, of course. There was no question in Issei's mind that at least some of them did their due diligence in hygiene. Those students, however, were outnumbered, and the smell hung over the entire place like a choking fume.

It was funny to Issei, if a thing with little humorous value can really be called "funny". The previous week, he'd probably have been part of the problem that he also probably wouldn't have been aware existed.

Yet on some level, the brunette was grateful for the reek just the same. After all, the noxious odor had the knock-on effect of blocking out a certain other scent, one he'd found it hard to ignore with just two people in the room. The noxious smell was annoying, but in more ways than one, it was better than smelling his classmate's blood.

* * *

Homeroom passed without incident or anything of interest. The teacher might as well have been speaking ancient Latin for all that Issei was listening; all of his thoughts were pointed inwards. To the note, in particular.

The first four words were self-explanatory. He knew what the craving was; quite how he'd go about sating it was still up in the air, but he knew the _what_.

No, what he found alarming was the second part.

The more thought Issei put into it, the less sense it made. What did the writer mean by that? Would he grow crazed and deranged in stereotypical fashion, attacking everything that moved until his thirst was sated? Or simply retreat into his own head and never crawl back out?

Issei gave a swallow at either thought, and once more was reminded of his parched throat as the next class began - a mathematics class.

"Good morning, everyone," Ms. Kobayashi said in her usual tone, one which contained neither the warmth of the early morning nor any hint that she enjoyed seeing any of them in her field of view. Without waiting for any replies, she spoke her next instruction. "I'd like you all to take out the homework I assigned you over the weekend and pass it forwards."

Right then and there, Issei's heart stopped. He wasn't the best student and he wouldn't claim to be, but he did take a _little_ pride in his schoolwork. Not much in school made him feel stupid quite like not having an assignment when it came time to hand things in.

He remembered the assignment being given out, even remembered the exact number set he was required to do. But there was no recollection of him doing it.

But still, in an effort to save a bit of face, hide the fact that he had nothing to pass up, Issei began digging through his binder, as though he weren't sure exactly where he'd left it in the rings.

Then, after a few turned pages, a stapled pack of papers stared back at him. Issei blinked, not quite believing it.

After a moment, he unclipped the homework assignment and skimmed it. And to his mild shock...

"...it's finished." Issei whispered in a voice so low that even he could barely hear himself. Yet despite his disbelief, it was indeed complete; every problem was answered and work was shown for each and every one of them.

After a moment or so, Issei felt something prod at his back. Something slightly sharp, yet with very little rigidity to back that attribute.

He took the stack of papers from his classmate behind him without a word, added his own to the stack and passed it forwards to repeat the process with the person in front of him.

Issei made sure not to look the other student in the eye when he handed the papers off.

* * *

Unbeknownst to Issei, at exactly that moment, a young-looking woman with bob-cut hair stood outside of his classroom door. Not directly outside, of course; she didn't want to disrupt the flow of any traffic coming in or out of the room. But very close by indeed.

She stood there, wondering about the person she'd seen go in. About that vampire who hadn't been one when he'd left the campus the previous week. She knew that he hadn't been because he and his two cohorts had spent more than a couple of hours doing chores around the campus for their numerous rules violations. How they hadn't been expelled yet, she honestly wasn't sure.

But his vampirism changed the scores. No, the entire game. She'd seen a few of the disguised students this morning, seen their terrified reactions to a vampire's wandering onto campus. And it would've been a lie to say that there wasn't just the smallest ounce of dread in her, too.


	4. Chapter 4

Issei tried to pay attention to Ms. Kobayashi, he really did. He wanted to do well, not miss any parts and bits that would surely be important later.

But the entire exercise was simply hopeless. He mindlessly copied what was being written on the whiteboard, but not for a minute could Issei stay focused on the woman trying to teach it. His thoughts were on other, more immediately relevant mysteries.

Issei had reasoned out the mystery of the homework assignment inside of thirty seconds. He recalled Friday evening in solid detail, but had no recollection of doing this assignment. Ms. Kobayashi had assigned it to him that same day.

It wasn't much of a clue, but in a mystery, a good detective makes use of any lead they can get.

Frustratingly, though, this particular hint was of little use. He'd done the homework assignment on Saturday, yes, but that was all he could glean from it. The clue lacked any useful context; Issei couldn't even say how long it would have taken him to do the assignment, and he didn't have any sort of set time to do homework even if he had.

Issei didn't even consider asking his parents about the things he'd done on Saturday. That would have raised too many red flags, and he doubted that they'd be able to help him much even if that weren't the case. His parents kept him on a bit of a loose leash; as they'd once put it, they didn't have the time, energy or interest to keep track of him everywhere he went and through everything he did.

The new vampire had always appreciated that. After all, what teenager wants for their parents to hover over them and monitor their every move?

Now, though, there was a tiny ember. Buried beneath piles of comfortable ash, but an ember nonetheless, burning with a hot indignation.

Issei mentally heaped more ash upon the ember, squelching and suppressing its fire. His parent's lack of restriction on his life could only serve to aid in keeping himself alive. Sure, they couldn't give him the information he wanted, but it cut in both directions. After all, relaxed oversight would make it that much easier to get blood into his mouth.

As he copied numbers and equations off the board, Issei wondered about the lack of emotion or disgust at the whole idea. In the media he'd consumed through the years, people who were turned into vampires always seemed to go through massive moral quandaries over consuming blood, seeming to reject it on a fundamental level. Issei felt none of that; there was only that odd feeling of acceptance, the same sensation as he'd felt a few hours before. Sure, there was something about the idea of drinking the blood of his former fellows that Issei found a tad nauseating, but that could be pushed aside. Issei found a lot of vegetables a tad nauseating, but he still pushed himself to eat those. He saw no point in denying the obvious or pretending that the thirst didn't exist. Not when every single drip of saliva that he swallowed was an uncomfortable reminder of his newfound craving. And certainly not when the price of refusing to indulge it was madness.

But that acceptance just brought him face-to-face with the question of acquisition.

He supposed he could play to the "classical" vampire image and begin prowling the streets at night. Stalking, waiting for the perfect victim and moment to strike. Then he'd pounce, on some jogger or dog-walker who'd made the mistake of letting themselves be alone in a safe town like Kuoh after sundown. He'd hold his victim still as they screamed, fangs glinting in the night as they tore into the hapless human's neck.

It was a sick little fantasy, and Issei knew there was no way in hell he was going to take that road. Putting aside that his conscious and moral mind was revolted by the very notion, Issei was sure that he'd never get away with even a single attack. And so his mind moved on.

Even if, somewhere deep inside his head, that fantasy held an unacknowledged appeal.

* * *

Luckily for Issei's wandering mind, Ms. Kobayashi never once called on him, and the class flowed by. The brunette had no idea what the class had been about, and he could only hope that his notes would be sufficient for later study.

The next class went exactly the same way. And then the next, and then the next. Every class was the same; keeping his mind on task was an absolute impossibility. The wonder about where he could get blood without drawing any suspicion was a stressful thought that was simultaneously too intoxicating to ignore. His schoolmates weren't of any help to his focus; his nose grew used to the foul odors of their skin as the hours ticked by, and the delectable salt-and-iron scent began to crawl back into his nostrils.

Issei's nose loved that smell and hated it in equal measure. Loved it for how wonderful it was to his nose, hated it for how it teased and tormented his mind. It was a constant reminder, that smell, of the thirst, as though his own saliva wasn't enough. _It's all in here_, that smell said in a mocking, noxious tone. _All this blood, running through their veins. Oh, won't you take a bite, Issei? Tear through the flesh and take it!_

Even as the smell said that, it knew that Issei's own morals would stay any action. And thus was it free to continue torturing him, dangling the thing the vampire wanted so close, but hopelessly out of reach.

The brunette had hoped to shut his nose up for a little while at lunch. What he'd brought wasn't the healthiest, but it had a pungent aroma that he'd begun to hope would block the scent of blood all around him.

No such luck. Sure, the scent of grease hazed the scent of blood. But the haze was thin. Easily pierced. And beneath the smell of his lunch, Issei could still make out the smell of blood.

His stomach did nothing to improve that situation. It still growled and demanded to be sated with non-liquid sustenance, but it was less eager. Less eager, even, than it had been at breakfast this morning. What it really wanted was obvious, and it was equally obvious even as Issei ate that his stomach's patience in waiting was far less than his mind's.

With that uncomfortable thought, Issei swallowed the last of his lunch.

He was only vaguely aware that he'd barely tasted it at all.

* * *

The rest of the day slid by much as the previous classes had. Notes were copied, lectures were heard, no thought whatsoever was put into them.

It almost came as a surprise to Issei to realize that classes had ended and that he was now free (and rather strongly encouraged) to leave the campus.

Issei wasn't the type to be involved in after-school activities. At most, he occasionally helped out in cleaning the campus, and that was almost always done as a result of punishment for he and his cohort's... activities. Most afternoons, he, Matsuda and Motohoma would leave the school almost as soon as they were allowed to. They'd congregate somewhere, most often Matsuda's house (courtesy of his large personal television) and play video games and watch porn for hours on end.

Today was a deviation from that routine, and not because Issei's mind was otherwise occupied. No, he could _always_ make space in his head for naked girls!

The real problem was, rather, that Matsuda and Motohoma were currently serving some punishment or another for peeping at the Kendo club for the millionth time. That was, at least, the rumor, and having served many punishments for the same himself, Issei didn't question it in the slightest.

Issei wasn't annoyed in the slightest at the fact that his friends had gotten in trouble. In fact, he was more angry that he wasn't right there, serving the punishment _with_ them.

The Kendo club had been getting new uniforms that morning. Matsuda had even mentioned that he'd found a new spot that offered a perfect view into the changing booths. And Issei, worried about his newly-discovered vampirism, had _forgotten_. Of all the things to forget! A once-in-a-high-school-experience moment, and he'd lost it to a small inconvenience!

Even through Issei's hazy thoughts, there was a fuming anger and jealousy towards his friends. How much had they seen? Had the view been good? How many different girls had unknowingly stripped in front of them before they'd finally been discovered?

And Matsuda and Motohoma would _never_ let him live down missing it. He knew that much for sure. They'd ramble about this day and what they'd seen to him weeks, months, hell, probably _years_ from now.

Yet somewhere, beneath the frustration that filled him as he thought about missing the glory that world had witnessed that morning, there was something else. A tranquil, yet frigid feeling.

No, that was wrong. It wasn't so much a feeling as an inner voice, one that lectured him in a frosty tone. It sounded like his own voice, yet at the same time, it seemed to come from a completely different person.

_Are you fucking kidding me, Issei? You're worried about not seeing the Kendo club naked for the thousandth time in your life? In case you hadn't noticed, you've got bigger problems to worry about._

And the worst part?

Even if he didn't want to admit it, the crystalline and icy voice seemed to have quite the point.

Yet despite his two friends being indisposed, Issei did not simply go directly home after school. In fact, he didn't leave the campus at all. Instead, he headed straight for Kuoh Academy's library.

He had homework that needed doing, that much was true enough. But it would've been a lie to say that that was his primary motive for going there. Any decent school library, after all, contains information on far more than just what's immediately relevant to the students who attend the institution. And there was one bit of information that had been gnawing at him, looming in the background behind his immediate worries of sating his thirst before it consumed him.

As soon as he entered the two-floor library, he made straight for one of the few open computers along the side wall. The smell of paper, amplified by his senses, was ignored as best it could be, and the vague smell of sweat that hung over the whole place went almost unnoticed.

Instead, as Issei slid into a wooden chair, a single question was his focus, a question that the internet might be able to answer:

Who had signed that note on his bedroom window?

* * *

Issei had been looking through articles for nearly twenty minutes when he first felt the urge to scream. At forty minutes, he had half a mind to put his fist through the computer screen.

It wasn't an emotion born of fear, but of frustration. He'd hoped the name "Morrigan" would turn up some sort of family history, or if he was lucky, some sort of social media presence. Instead, it had turned up a number of curious articles; some were general information, others were clearly authored by altogether less professional writers.

Half an hour's writing had established the following in Issei's mind: "The Morrigan" was from Irish mythology.

Beyond that, the only consistency that Issei could see was that there was _no_ consistency. The Morrigan was a war goddess. Wait, no, one associated with sovereignty. Never mind, the Morrigan wasn't a goddess at all, but simply a "figure" of some kind. She encouraged warriors on the battlefield, except that she was apparently a figure associated heavily with portends of doom. Oh, but it was actually _three_ figures with different names. Even the name "Morrigan" wasn't consistent; Issei counted at least four different renditions, each apparently having interacted with other names that Issei couldn't pronounce.

Precisely nothing he found had anything to do with vampires.

After nearly an hour had passed, Issei finally admitted the obvious to himself: The name on the note was another dead end. It was probably an alias, anyways, one no doubt picked so as to lead anyone who tried to track it into exactly the sort of frustrating search of nothing that Issei was in right now.

Issei nearly smashed his fist into the desk, thinking better of it moments before actually doing it. The brunette was unsure of the true limits of his newfound strength, and he didn't want to risk leaving a giant chunk of the wood missing. It would have been one of many things that Issei didn't have the ability to explain.

So after sixty minutes or so, he cleared the browser windows and turned the monitor off. He cursed under his breath as he moved his bags to a nearby table, pulled out his homework and began to write furiously.

Even as he was leaving an hour and a half later, Issei had failed to take note of the petite, white-haired student seated a few tables behind him.

* * *

"What did you find out, Koneko?"

Koneko Toujou swallowed, feeling slightly off-put by the three stares currently focused on her. She didn't hate the people behind them, of course; they all had reason to want to know what Koneko had learned. That wouldn't make her like being the center of attention, though.

"Issei Hyoudou is a vampire. No question."

Koneko's red-haired master folded her own hands at that statement. The young woman's lip was sandwiched between slightly tensed teeth. Her answer took a long time to come out, and when it did, it took the form of just a few words.

"Oh, dear. Not good."

"How could that have happened?" a blonde young man piped up. "You're sure he doesn't have some connection to the monstrous realms, President?"

"You've asked me that twice now, Kiba," the red-haired woman said, slowly rubbing a temple. "The answer's still yes, at least as far as I've been able to find. I cross-referenced everything I could find on him with every supernatural database I have access to. Nothing came up at all."

"But then... how?" Kiba asked, the question more directed at himself than to his President.

"The way most vampires get new converts, I'd guess," his master said. "Find someone they think would make a good addition to the species and work them over from there."

"Just going by what we have, I'd guess it'd probably have to be an extremely powerful example of the species," came the voice of the room's final inhabitant.

"What makes you say that, Akeno?" Kiba asked.

The violet-eyed, black-haired beauty shrugged. "It's simple, really. This vampire, whoever they are, managed to slip into Kuoh and turn one of the students here, all without alerting a single one of us. Anything I might have missed, Rias?" Her eyes drifted down to the red-haired woman seated on the couch that Akeno currently stood behind.

Rias exhaled. "Put that way, Akeno, it makes good sense. We might well have an Elder on our hands."

"What can we do about it?" Kiba asked, eyes narrowed.

"Nothing at all," Rias said. "You know how powerful Elder vampires are. Any Elder who deserved the title could kill all of us in a second."

Kiba gritted his teeth, but said nothing.

"That still doesn't explain why they came here," Akeno said. "There are dozens of cities and towns in this country that aren't being overseen by Devils. Why come turn humans here?"

"Thrill? Challenge?" Rias said. "Honestly, I'm not sure that that matters."

Only then did Koneko break in again, her words slightly hesitant.

"I don't think that's right, President." Even as the words left Koneko's mouth, a tiny shiver went through her, one hopefully imperceptible.

Rias raised her eyebrows slightly, though there was no malice or sarcasm in the gesture. "What do you mean, Koneko?"

Koneko swallowed a second time. "When you sent me to check him out, I... well, I felt his aura. He wasn't hiding it. But there was something else..." For a moment, Koneko stopped, searching for words. Rias, Akeno and Kiba remained silent, eyes fixed on Koneko once more.

After a few seconds, Koneko found her words once more. "There was something _beneath_ the aura."

"Any idea what it was?" Rias asked.

Koneko shook her head. "Couldn't tell. Not a clear enough aura to pick it out."

"Even so, is there anything about it you could tell us?"

A breath escaped the petite girl, then another breath and a third swallow. Then, Koneko's eyes shifted to meet her master's.

"All I could tell was that it was something powerful. Something angry."


	5. Chapter 5

After trodding into his house, up the stairs and closing the door to his bedroom, Issei's first instinct was to just flop down on his bed.

It wasn't just that he wanted to relax. He definitely wanted to do that, but more than that, he felt something else.

Even as he'd walked out of the late afternoon sun and into his home, he'd felt his eyelids begin to droop. Now, looking at his mattress, the tug at their corners became more insistent and prodding.

Unlike other, more pressing mysteries, Issei could figure out the "why" of this particular oddity easily enough. He'd woken up a couple of hours early this morning and hadn't been able to get back to sleep, that was all.

With a moment's passage came the memory of what he had awoken to.

_Do not resist the craving, or it will drive you mad._

A shudder rippled through Issei's flesh as the words of the note strolled through his mind. He shook his head after a few seconds, as though trying to toss the words from his mind. Looking up, he took in the sight of the bed again, and seriously considered ripping his school uniform off and crawling under the sheets.

Better sense prevailed in the end, though. He didn't want to throw his sleeping schedule further off than it already was. The drowsiness wasn't _that_ strong, after all. It could be ignored. All the brunette needed was a distraction. A distraction just to keep himself awake a while longer.

Just to stay awake, yes. Just to stay awake.

For an instant, Issei thought about calling up Matsuda or Motohama to go out somewhere before he remembered that they were still in detention and likely would be so until after sundown. The Student Council seemed to regard the three of them as a free cleaning service.

He briefly considered going out anyway. Perhaps some time in his old haunts, even with his massively improved hearing and smell causing problems, would do him a little bit of good. But that thought died just as quickly as the first with a quick glance at the window curtains; even with them shut, Issei could still see tiny pinpricks of sunlight poking through the brown fabric. Though his nose and ears were quickly learning to adjust, the sun's fury had remained steadfast and nearly impossible to ignore.

Issei shook his head, and after a few breaths he slipped over to his desk and turned the monitor on. He'd intended to open up the internet and throw himself onto the information superhighway, but as his eyes drifted over the icons, one jumped out at him.

The brunette smiled to himself as he realized it was Matsuda's new game, the one he'd been so generous as to lend to Issei. In the bizarre events of the last few days, Issei wasn't all that surprised that he'd forgotten about it.

Surprisingly enough, the game wasn't an excuse for porn of any kind. It was just a simple role-playing game, a fantasy romp wherein every character was covered nearly head-to-toe in armor. Knights and dragons in a fallen kingdom.

The grin on his lips grew a little wider. It would be this session, surely. He'd kill that damn knight boss and move on with the game. And with that little spark, a small fire began to burn with a new determination, this one entirely artificial.

As the game loaded, Issei tried to remember the knight's moveset. A cone-shaped sweep with a magical sword. A slow 270-degree swing with the same. Beams and lasers shot from the sword depending on whether or not it was swung or thrusted. A planted sword that summoned a field of blades. A shield bash that-

The game world appeared on his screen, and Issei blinked.

He remembered where he'd saved his game - near a pitch of tents not far from the knight's boss arena. His character stood nowhere near there. And that wasn't all that was off - as he looked at the screen and his character on it, he saw other things.

The warrior that was Issei's player character was wearing a completely different set of armor. No longer was his character defended by ebony plate armor that armored him well but impeded movement. Nor was his character wielding the tremendous sword that would've snapped the arms of any real-world human. Instead, his character wore a green and red mix-and-match ensemble, which he had no doubt weighed quite a bit less. And in his character's hands was a club, equally impractically massive to his usual sword.

Eyebrows raised with curiosity, Issei opened his status chart. He wasn't sure what he expected to see; he wasn't keeping track of his level in the game, nor did he have any solid recollection of the exact items he'd been carrying.

After the listless look through his inventory, Issei closed the inventory menu and cracked open his map, noted his location and started moving.

A few minute's running about the game had him standing back in the courtyard wherein the knight was fought. _Was_, because there was no sign whatsoever of the boss now. And Issei knew that the boss fight should start regardless of what side the courtyard was entered from.

And for several long minutes, Issei stared blankly at the screen, thoughts he'd been seeking to lock away for a while breaking from their freshly-forged chains and running wild.

He supposed he must have closed the game at some point. That was the only logical reason that he could think of for his normal computer background to be in his view. Issei was barely paying attention to the world outside of his own head as he wrangled to try to bring his raging mind into control. While he might not have been able to remember his exact level or what was in his inventory, Issei knew very well that he had _not_ defeated the knight before he'd gone to bed on Friday evening.

Only when his brain was totally subdued and calm once more did Issei finally let himself really think about this.

He grasped the concept easily enough. And for just a moment, a tiny thrill went through the brunette's mind as he realized he had another clue to his missing memories.

That thrill lasted exactly as long as it took to realize that it was just as useless as the homework. What was worse, it was useless for exactly the same reason - he had no idea when exactly he'd played the game last. A quick check of his save file confirmed what he'd already been fairly certain of - it recorded only time played, not at what time the file was loaded.

This time, Issei _did_ slap the wood of his desk. It didn't bend or break, luckily, though Issei had kept just enough self-awareness to not put any real force into the blow.

A slow, irritated sigh left the teen seated at the desk as he considered things and tried to let his frustration burn itself out, as such feelings are wont to do.

Only one day of clues, and Issei was already getting _very_ tired of dead-ends. None of his clues had an ounce of context that would have made them mean anything, and without it, they were useless. Worse than useless. There was just a thin ray of potential in them, one that had gone unrealized, and that unfulfilled potential left Issei wanting to throw something.

He had a name, but no face or voice to put it to. He had a homework assignment, but no more than the barest clue as to when it might have been done. And now a video game boss, beaten at a time equally mysterious.

The brunette quietly swore and stood up from his chair. A quick tap on the computer caused the disc drive to eject, at which point Issei plucked the disc out and put it back in the game box, the one that he'd almost thrown out by accident in his marathon cleaning session the day before.

Somehow, Issei didn't see himself finishing the game. Not until he'd pieced this whole situation together.

He tried to idly browse the internet after that, even looking up porn and tried to lose himself in the impropriety. But even as he stared at the video of a woman performing all sorts of lewd acts, Issei found his thoughts drifting more towards how the woman's blood would taste than how it would feel to be… _attended to_ by her.

After a while, Issei closed the browser and turned off the monitor, stood from his chair, and laid down on his bed. As he did, he threw a look to the time, idly noting that it was half-past five. The sun was still out, and while it was lower than it had been before he had left, it would be a while yet before it went down completely.

As Issei stared at the dots of fading light in the curtains, he considered going outside anyway. The room and his house were starting to make him feel claustrophobic.

Then he remembered what time it was. Dinner would be served up soon, and Issei didn't want to miss it; he knew full well that while his mother's initial anger might have cooled off, she hadn't forgotten that he'd "stayed out" on Saturday night. Crossing her again by missing dinner was likely to end with strict punishments.

Issei swallowed, and was reminded once again of a secondary concern, one coming at him slowly but inexorably. It wasn't far from the sort of scenario found in nightmares. The thirst was the horror needed for a nightmare, and it was just right for that purpose. Only Issei recognized it, and despite his best efforts, he couldn't escape it.

The craving was definitely worse than it had been this morning. Not by any large amount, not enough that he would attack at the first whiff of blood. But all the same, the thirst had grown. What hadn't was his list of potential solutions for it.

Ignoring it apparently wasn't an option, but obtaining it wasn't, either. Attacking someone was out of the question, but the brunette didn't see any other available means. He severely doubted that the local hospital would just let him walk out with a bag of blood. Issei snorted to himself as he imagined the excuse.

_Oh, my apologies, nurse, I just need this bag of blood to ensure I don't go insane and start killing people because I got turned into a vampire even though I don't actually remember it happening._

The brunette could only imagine how thick the door to his padded cell would be.

Yet that was no comfort to his burning throat. No comfort to his need for blood, one that grew imperceptibly worse with every passing minute.

Issei's mind kept wandering, chasing intellectual rabbits down their holes. Idly, he wondered if this was what an addiction felt like. A pressing, ever-growing need for something, one that never went away no matter how much you needed to ignore it. One that could destroy you if one tried to quit it.

The teen chuckled to himself again as he imagined the outcomes. Self-help and addiction groups for a blood addiction, ones designed to wean vampires off of blood. He could almost picture his parents dumping old bags of human blood at his feet and trying to force him into rehab. There'd be websites with pictures of human blood crossed out and-

Very suddenly, Issei sat up as a few tiny, utterly disconnected facts came together, and quite suddenly he had a new spark of hope for a clue.

He practically sprinted the few feet from his bed to the computer. The few moments from the monitor's power button being clicked and it actually coming on again were some of the longest he'd sat through. Eventually, however, his desktop greeted him, and Issei immediately double-clicked his internet browser. Two or three clicks, and he could see the page he was looking for.

And on his history, he saw his first real bit of information.

The last search on Saturday was made at 11:27 a.m. In that search, the user had looked up a set of tips for the boss he hadn't able to beat.

A grin, a true grin, crawled across Issei's lips.

* * *

Despite the bit of progress, the euphoria quickly lapsed, simply because his internet history didn't actually help answer any questions. It didn't make much difference for Issei to know that he'd been in the house at that time. Issei knew that whatever had happened to make him what he was had probably happened much later. The most he could say is that he hadn't left the house to end up in the park yet.

Ultimately, the clue didn't help make much headway towards solving the real mystery, and soon enough, the gnawing frustration crawled back in.

The rest of the night was uneventful. Dinner was normal, if not quite as satisfying as it should have been. Issei managed to keep himself awake until about nine in the evening, at which point he happily dropped into bed. Sleep came quickly, deep and dreamless.

The next morning, he was aroused by a familiarity - his alarm clock, buzzing and whining and screaming a song he found almost as distasteful as the sun's rays.

Breakfast, like supper the previous night, was simple and straightforward, with all the usual talk and chatter being had between mother, father and son. It was a routine well-practiced and a routine well-liked by all.

The walk to school was uneventful, if a bit irritating. The smells and noise still made their presence known, but Issei found that they were bothering him a bit less than they had in prior days. The sun, though, hadn't dulled its hatred of him.

The brunette could only hope that he'd eventually stop noticing it. Maybe he just needed more sun, needed to endure its rays longer. A smirk creased his lips as he pictured himself on a beach, spread out in the sand and being blasted by unmitigated sunlight.

It almost needn't be said that the smirk didn't have much humor in it.

As it was, however, Issei was able to keep himself mostly wrapped up in his own thoughts without letting himself be too consumed by his two biggest worries. He was so successful at this, in fact, that he didn't notice the quiet that had come over the entire school. He didn't see the hushed whispers between students, or notice that the normally noisy hallways now resembled tombs.

None of it was directed at him, particularly, and thus it perhaps isn't surprising that the spiky-haired teenager initially took no notice of it.

Only did he realize something was off when he walked into his homeroom and was instantly pulled aside by his two friends. Even that wasn't the trigger in and of itself; he was used to that. The trigger was, instead, the tones of voice his friends spoke in.

Normally, Matsuda and Motohama were energetic even in their whispers. This morning, however, their whispers were tense and, if Issei strained his ears, laced with a tiny lick of fear.

"Real fucked up, isn't it?" Matsuda said.

"Wait, what-" Issei said, before Motohama cut him off.

"Yeah, man! Who the hell would want to do something like that!"

"Think one of us might be next?" Matsuda asked.

"Guys," Issei interjected, only to be ignored.

"Maybe! Maybe one of the teachers did it!" Motohama said.

"Or one of the students," Matsuda said.

"_Guys_," Issei said, a bit more forcefully this time. Motohama started to say something, but Issei plowed ahead and cut him off, seizing the opening in the conversation. "Back up. What the hell are you guys talking about?"

Matsuda and Motohama looked at him - or at least Issei assumed Matsuda looked, behind those thick-rimmed glasses - as though he were stupid. "You didn't hear?"

Issei shrugged. "Guess not. What's going on?"

Matsuda gulped, but Motohama was the one to speak. Leaning in close, he whispered, "One of the students turned up dead yesterday."

Issei recoiled back a few inches and hung there with his jaw slightly agape, processing what his friend had said.

"Oh, it gets worse," Matsuda said. "You know what I heard?"

It was Issei turn to swallow. Somehow, Issei thought that no matter what Matsuda was about to say, he wasn't going to like what he heard.

"What?" Issei's voice was quiet now, tense as his the voices of his two friends.

Matsuda leaned in, and in a voice that bordered on conspiratorial, spoke.

"I heard that when they found the guy, something had sucked out all his blood."


	6. Chapter 6

The next few seconds might as well have been several decades for Issei. Matsuda's words had crashed into Issei's head like a battering ram, and now his conscious mind strained to pick up the pieces of composure before others noticed they'd been scattered at all.

"Issei?" Matsuda said, obviously noticing his silence.

Issei shook his head, trying to hide the quiet horror in his mind. "You're kidding me. Where the hell did you hear that?"

"Akazawa told me," Matsuda said.

Issei snorted, and he could only hope that his friends couldn't hear the note of relief in it. "Akazawa? You know that guy's totally nuts, right?" Issei said, trying to sound dismissive. "That's the same guy who said that there were religious orders who fought monsters and stuff. He's full of shit and you know it."

Issei pointedly ignored the fact that he himself was now aware that at least one kind of monster was all-too-real. Intimately aware.

Matsuda shrugged. "Maybe." After a second or so of silence, Matsuda swallowed. "Still, pretty fucked up to think about."

Issei opened his mouth after that, intending to ask for more information. Before he could, though, he was quite suddenly cut off by the arrival of the teacher. Ms. Kobayashi threw the door open as she always did, practically slamming the thing against the wall, and in an instant, the entire room was filled with the sounds of students scrambling back to their desks.

The class was dead silent as Ms. Kobayashi addressed them. This morning, there was none of the rigid formality they'd come to expect from their mathematics teacher. Instead, her voice was tight and hushed, almost pained.

But she still spoke.

"From what I've gathered, I'm sure you're all aware already. But in case you weren't, it's my duty as a teacher to inform you all that the rumors and news reports are true. One of your classmates, Genshirou Saji, was found dead last night."

At that, Issei felt himself take a sharp breath. He wasn't entirely sure why, but he could only suppose that he'd wanted it to not be true. He'd wanted it to be a sick prank Matsuda and Motohama had seen fit to pull. A foolish hope, he now knew.

"It's also my duty to inform you," Ms. Kobayashi continued, her tone still solemn, "that you're all to be let out of school at lunch today."

On any other day, there would have been students cheering, or at the very least smiling and giggling to themselves. Today, however, cold silence reigned over the room.

Ms. Kobayashi didn't spend much more time on the death of one of the students. Once her announcements had been made, she began writing on the board.

As she went about pretending to teach a day's lesson in mathematics to students who were pretending to learn, Issei continued to mindlessly copy, just as he had the day before.

But like every other student in the room, Issei's mind was entirely elsewhere, and for once, on the same subject.

Just probably not quite the same _aspect_ of that subject. Because what Matsuda and Motohama had said gnawed at him.

_"Something had sucked out all his blood."_

The momentary relief he'd felt at learning it was Kaito saying those things had been just that - momentary. He hadn't been able to ignore the obvious for more than an instant.

It was all just too perfect. Though he was trying to ignore it, the parched feeling in his throat was an ever-present reminder of what he truly was, now.

His mind called up its memories of the previous night. He examined everything he could recall carefully, trying to account for any missing time. There was none, and Issei found his heart thudding at the other possible reason.

Issei tried to haul up another set of memories, these from this morning. Tried to assess if anything had been off about them.

There was nothing there, either. No hint that he'd somehow slinked out of his room in a bloodthirsty haze that he didn't remember.

Issei could only wish that that was enough.

* * *

For as short as it was, the day still dragged by.

Ms. Kobayashi had only been the first act of the impromptu play being performed that day by the students and teachers of Kuoh Academy. Numerous performances were going on, one in every classroom with students in it. The play, called "Pretending Nothing Had Happened", was well-performed indeed, even if each time a teacher went to a different classroom to perform their part again, they had to improvise a slightly new set of lines.

The students had an entirely different role in the performance. They were not to say anything, not even act like they had just found out that their classmate had indeed been murdered at its start. Despite the total absence of rehearsal and choreography for the play, it was a role they played admirably, one and all.

It was quite a long play, one lasting for nearly four hours, and each second seemed to take longer than the last.

Like all other students, Issei was a performer in the play. And like all the other students, beneath the illusion of calm, a raging tempest of emotions swirled within him.

There was shock, of course. A classmate having died tends to stir that emotion even in the most hateful teenager. Horror, too, and fear.

And that was the first difference. The fear. Because Issei had it. Lots of it. Far more than most other students, and for a completely different reason.

A part of his rational mind had tried to argue with that sensation. He knew Kaito Akazawa wasn't much of a source. There was no hard evidence. It was more likely something that had been made up. Hell, he didn't have any evidence yet that his classmate had been murdered. If anything, the fact that he still felt that thirst, ever-present and ever-stronger, was a sign that he hadn't done it, right?

Fear, however, pays no attention to reason. It was, in fact, his fear that the rumor might be true that led to the second, and perhaps more callous, difference.

Issei had known Genshirou Saji, he supposed. If his memory could be trusted (though Issei grew less certain of that with every minute), then Saji had been in his class the year before. That, however, was as far as his relationship with Saji had gone. Issei couldn't even recall speaking with him at any point. Issei wasn't even sure if he could have picked the latter's face out from a lineup.

Now he was dead, and Issei wondered if he should have felt more at that. Something beyond the shock, horror and fear. He did feel sympathy, yes. Sympathy for any family or friends Saji might have had. But grief? No. He couldn't say he really felt that. But he could definitely say he felt fear of whoever had killed him.

Even if - _especially_ if - that person had been himself.

* * *

As Ms. Kobayashi had promised, when what would have normally been lunchtime finally deigned to come, an announcement came over the loudspeakers to tell the students that everyone needed to vacate the campus immediately. Most did so immediately, including Issei and his friends.

There were a few students, however, who disobeyed the order. They instead headed towards a building on the campus. An old school building, several stories tall and overgrown with vines and dirt, boards over all but one of the windows. The building was vastly older than most of the students, and quite a few of the same had wondered over the years why the old structure hadn't yet been demolished.

The students who walked in that direction, however, couldn't have cared less about the condition of the building. They all knew that the interior was in shockingly good repair when one considered the state of its exterior. That most of those who went there did so at all was not in itself unusual.

There was one student, however, who was not among the usual selection. Yet despite that, most of those who were did not challenge her when she walked into a room on the third floor, not even when she swept right past them to stand directly in front of the desk of the final one. The other three stayed silent and looked on, seated on the couches in front of the desk.

"Hello, Sona," Rias said, voice tight and a bit cold, looking at the young woman with bob-cut hair across the desk.

Sona took no offense at the tone her friend took. She could feel the dread that caused it, too.

"You heard what happened, I assume?"

Rias nodded. "And I received confirmation from my source with the police earlier. Whoever's spreading those rumors is right. Genshirou Saji was murdered. And no, there was no blood in him, either."

A fire burned behind Rias' eyes as she spoke, anger thick in her voice.

Sona exhaled, feeling the same anger that Rias did. She'd had her eye on Saji for months now, and had been working out how to approach him with an offer for the last week. She already knew he could fit within her five remaining Pawns.

An innocent life lost and an opportunity denied. How could she _not_ be angry? Yet even still, Sona spoke her next words.

"You're not going to like what I'm about to say, Rias."

"You think I shouldn't do anything?"

"Not yet."

Rias put her hands in front of her face, fingers lacing together. "You're right. I don't like it."

"Rias," Sona said, "we have no proof that Issei Hyoudou had _anything_ to do with this."

Rias' jaw tightened. "I know that. But you can't deny it's all quite suspicious. Issei Hyoudou just _happens_ to be turned into a vampire and a student just so _happens_ to be murdered and drained of all his blood a day or two later."

"I get it, Rias. I'm just saying you shouldn't attack him without hard evidence."

"I hope you didn't just come here to scold me, Sona."

Sona shook her head. "What I really wanted to do was talk to you about a plan."

"What do you mean, exactly?" Rias asked, brow furrowing.

"I said we didn't have any evidence, not that Hyoudou wasn't probably our best lead."

Rias leaned back in her chair and whistled through her teeth. "Well, confronting him directly is out of the question, obviously. What do you suggest?"

"I'd say, before anything else, we need to identify who Hyoudou's master is. Who turned him. Even just seeing Hyoudou's abilities in action might help. Once we do that, we can go from there. Try to deal with the master or take things up the chain, if we need to. Or at least eliminate Hyoudou as a suspect."

"You want to stalk him, then?"

"Exactly," Sona said. "Figure out if it's Hyoudou or his master we should be looking at."

"And what if neither did it?"

Both Rias and Sona started slightly at the feminine voice that had spoken up from behind them. Each turned, one more than the other, to look at the speaker.

"What do you mean, Akeno?" Rias asked.

Akeno rested her chin on a fist, appearing contemplative. "I'm saying, what if Hyoudou didn't do it, and his master didn't do it either? What if both of them are just as clueless as we are?"

"To add to that," Kiba interjected, "what's to say they're not being set up? I mean, vampires don't need to kill to slake their thirst. Not even close."

"You think somebody might be trying to frame Issei for it?" Koneko asked, echoing the thoughts of almost everyone else.

"Just a thought," Kiba replied.

"Look," Sona said, allowing just a tiny edge of slight force into her tone, "I appreciate the ideas, but that kind of speculation doesn't get us anywhere. We can't be sure of _anything_ until we have some information." She put her hands up and shook her head. "Look, I'm not a huge fan of this idea, either, but I'm not sure what else to do." Sona turned and looked at Rias, expectation written on her face.

And after a moment, Rias nodded. "All right. We'll go with your idea, Sona. Unless one of you has a better one?" Her gaze swept her peerage, all three of whom had gone silent.

All three of them remained so, and Rias nodded again, this time towards her peerage rather than Sona. "All of you, cancel all of your contracts for the evening and foreseeable future. I know you're all eager to rank up, but…"

"Say no more, Rias," Kiba said. "We're behind you, all the way."

"Thank you, Kiba," Rias said, smiling for the first time since she entered the room that day.

That smile vanished the moment Koneko spoke again.

"What about Gaspy?"

Rias' jaw tightened again. "We need to leave Gasper out of this. If a vampire finds out about him, who _knows_ what they'll do. You know what they did to him before, Koneko."

Koneko shrugged her petite shoulders. "If you say so."

Silence hung in the room a moment, before Sona finally turned and started to walk out. Partway out the door, she stopped and turned back.

"I'll head back to the Student Council building and let my peerage know the decision. We can work out who observes when once that's done."

Rias nodded, but said nothing. Accepting that, Sona turned and walked back out of the building.

* * *

When Issei walked through the door, he couldn't say he was all that surprised when he was immediately accosted by his parents. Nor that they hugged him right away and told him that they loved him.

Not that his nose wasn't still tormented by the smell of their blood, even more so than it had been this morning.

There was the expected round of questions, ones that came off almost as nosy rather than done from fear. He confirmed for his parents that his walks to and from school had been uneventful, no one had approached him and that nothing bad had happened to him.

It took a while, but they bought it eventually. Eventually, they pulled back, relenting and leaving him be.

Issei walked up the stairs and into his room. The shades were still drawn shut from that morning, and Issei didn't bother opening them as he used to. Instead, he forced himself to turn on the lights. Forced, because he didn't really _want_ the extra light. After a day soaked in it in various forms, Issei would have been more than happy to just leave them off and be wrapped in shadow.

His lips curled upwards in a humorless smile at that thought. He could only guess that that was the vampiric part of his mind talking.

Then he swallowed, and the smile fell off his face.

Issei shook his head, then went and pulled his textbook out of his school supplies. He had a few bits of homework that were due - not soon, but coming up in the next few weeks, and getting them done seemed like a decent enough use of time.

But even as he tried to throw himself into his schoolwork, the questions came again. Poured back into his mind like water from a storm.

The questions about why Genshirou Saji, a student Issei had never known, was dead. Why Akazawa was spreading those little rumors. And behind them lay another question, this one a little older.

Behind those questions lay the thirst. The thirst was still there, still lapping at him every time a trickle of saliva went down his throat. It snarled and growled and demanded of his mind to be sated. And no matter how much Issei tried to distract himself, it would not abate. It would not leave him alone.

Issei only realized that his pencil hadn't touched the paper in quite some time when he looked up at his clock and realized that it was nearly four in the afternoon. And as he stared down at the desk, he came to the conclusion that he'd have to come back to his assignments some other time. Once he'd worked out his little proclivities.

Somehow.

* * *

The evening dragged its feet just as the school day had. Neither of his parents wanted to make dinner, and Issei even less interest in eating. The whole day had churned his stomach.

Instead, Issei turned on his computer and went on the internet. He wasn't searching for anything in particular. He occupied his mind with random articles, forum posts, and whatever else.

At several points, he tried to work up the will to search up articles related to the murder of his classmate. But that same fear that had crammed itself into his head upon hearing what Matsuda said stayed his fingers.

It was bad to be uncertain. But uncertainty was a known quantity, something understood. And that was somehow, in some twisted way, better than knowing for sure.

The hours crawled on, Issei trying to block out his own thoughts and the thirst and not having much like with either until, mercifully, the sun slipped down the horizon.

With relief that he'd never quite felt before, Issei slipped into a nightshirt and fell into bed.

And yet…

And yet, as Issei tossed and turned, he found that he couldn't get comfortable. He couldn't feel any sort of sleepiness come towards his mind. The pleasant fuzz of drowsiness didn't enter his thoughts, the thoughts that had been kept swirling by the same questions of the earlier hours.

Only around two in the morning did Issei finally accept that sleep wasn't coming. Not anytime soon, anyway.

A burst of dejection shot through Issei as he gave up and pushed the covers off of himself. He moved carefully, every sound seeming to be far louder than it had been a few days ago, though he also knew that his parents were sound asleep.

Issei found himself walking towards his room's window. He wasn't entirely sure of why, really, but he could guess. The darkness of the night called to him. And there _was_ something he had always liked about just looking out at the darkened town, lit only by specks of orange from streetlights.

But when he threw the curtain open for the first time that day, Issei found himself blinking at what awaited him beyond the glass.

A thick, soupy fog had covered the town's buildings and streets. Pinpricks of light struggled to shine through it in a few places. What held Issei's attention, however, was the odd feeling of familiarity. That there were feelings like that at all was itself strange; Kuoh wasn't a town prone to much fog, and Issei was left pondering for a few moments.

And when those few moments slipped by and Issei finished examining his memories, a single word pushed itself out of his lips.

"Tuesday..."

The word was low, but it was enough, and the puzzle pieces assembled.

Because there _had_ been fog on Tuesday, hadn't there? Yes, _yes_, there had been. Issei gave himself a mild mental kick for having been so preoccupied with that note to take notice of it.

_Do not resist the craving, or it will drive you mad..._

Issei gave his head a quick, fierce shake, trying to drive out unwanted, distracting thoughts with little success. And once he'd gotten through with that, Issei found the same frustration boiling up inside as with his homework and internet history.

Without wider context, the clue was totally meaningless.

Issei's teeth ground so hard that he would've been surprised if he didn't take a millimeter or so off of them.

No clue he could find was helping him in the slightest. Sure, he knew he'd been home before noon on Sunday and that there was some unusual fog rolling through. But those things told him nothing by themselves.

And then, quite suddenly, Issei's desire to scream was utterly quashed. Because something had caught his eye, and it was a sight that brought him back to reality in an instant.

There was someone moving in the fog.

The mix of both the fog itself and the distance meant it was impossible to make out any more than their silhouette. But that meant nothing to Issei, any more than the idea that it might just have been someone up for a late stroll to a twenty-four-hour corner store that his town had plenty of. Almost before he realized what he was doing, Issei had stripped off his nightshirt and thrown on street clothes. He didn't bother with his normal, out-of-school sneakers, opting instead for a cheap pair of slides he kept just for occasions like this.

He was only barely able to keep in mind that he needed to keep quiet, lest he alert his parents, as he slipped down the stairs.

Issei opened the front door, slipped out. Gently closed it.

Then he took off at a dead run down the street, towards where he'd seen the figure. His window had faced the correct direction, and Issei pushed his legs as hard as he could.

And as he did, Issei found something else - that was much, _much_ farther than he remembered.

Even as the thoughts of the figure remained in his mind, marvel at his own physical prowess came into play. He was easily running faster than most Olympic sprinters, and barely breaking a sweat doing it. It took quite a while before Issei felt his heart rate start to increase, and his breath counts rose equally slowly.

Then, as he reached the intersection where he'd spotted the figure, he excitedly looked around.

His brief moment of euphoria crashed down around him when he realized there was nobody in sight. No people of any kind, except for one idiot teenager with messy brown hair. The figure, who or whatever it had been, was gone. And Issei was left wanting to scream all over again.

Had his eyes been playing tricks on him? Had there been no figure at all, just some odd twisting and bending of light?

Issei didn't know, and to say he hated that he didn't know would've been to entirely understate the situation.

He knew better than to scream out, though. At best, no one would hear and no one would notice. At worst, he'd have to explain just why he was outside past midnight. And Issei did _not_ want to have to explain that. Not when there was a murderer running loose.

So, still frustrated from not catching the figure in the mist, Issei turned and started walking back the way he came.

A faint rustling made him stop.

His head turned, and through the thick fog, he could see he was at an alley's mouth. He knew the alley well enough, of course, having lived in his house as long as he had.

But the fog was just thick enough that he couldn't quite see what was causing it.

Issei stood at the alley's mouth for a good half a minute, weighing options. Go in, and risk confrontation, or stay out and remain ignorant? What if the figure had seen him coming and darted into this alley between a house and a grocery store?

It almost needn't be said that Issei couldn't resist the temptation in the end.

As soon as he stepped into the alley, the reek of trash smacked him in the face like a battering ram. But Issei refused to let that stop him. Pinching his nose, he stubbornly walked towards the far end of the alley, and soon enough, the source of the noise came into his view.

For the third time in less than half an hour, Issei was sorely disappointed.

It was nothing more than a group of crows, one of the hundreds, perhaps thousands that flew around Kuoh. Nothing special or worth noting. They were pecking at a carcass of some unfortunate small animal that they'd seemingly dragged in, or more likely had died on the spot. And the rustling had been nothing more than a few of those same crows, standing atop a small bag of trash as they ripped tiny bits out of the carrion.

This time, Issei didn't have to stifle any screams of frustration. Instead, it was just a long, slow, disappointed sigh. Then, he started to turn.

Started.

Because quite suddenly, the rustling had stopped.

Issei turned back to find an odd sight - every single one of the crows had ceased pecking at their meal. Now, they all were looking towards him - or rather, towards his ankles, since none of them were large enough to look any higher.

After a moment, one of the crows stepped away. This crow, probably the largest of the batch of six or seven gathered there, took a few slow steps towards him.

The crow preened a wing. Then, it looked up at him, and Issei swore the thing was staring straight into his eyes. After a moment, its beak opened.

And the crow asked him, "What are your orders?"

* * *

_**A/N: Yeah, my attempts at coming up with foreign names are pretty dreadful. And yeah, I know that Koneko calling Gasper "Gaspy" is purely an English dub thing, but it's cute and I'm keeping it in. Also, as if it wasn't clear enough, I'm taking some liberties with how vampires are portrayed here as opposed to in canon.**_


	7. Chapter 7

For several very long seconds, Issei could do nothing but stare down at the crow who had spoken.

And then he smiled. A few heartbeats after that, he found himself laughing.

This was it. This was what the note had warned him of. Seemed it hadn't taken nearly as long as he'd thought it would to start kicking in, but hey - at least he wasn't ripping people's throats out. It really was just a normal kind of crazy, the kind with delusions and ravings and whatnot. Hell, maybe _he'd_ grow wings soon! Who gave a shit if the wings were real - he wouldn't be sane enough to care! Maybe he could-

"What are your orders?"

Issei snapped back to reality, slightly startled at both the repetition and the sharp clarity of it. He looked down to find that the larger crow hadn't moved from its position. Nor had the others behind it so much as twitched a feather. With eyes on the sides of their heads, one wouldn't think that staring forward, enraptured, was possible for a creature like a crow, but Issei was starting to reconsider that notion.

Issei swallowed as the little birds stared at him. And after a moment, he said, "Go… go back to what you were doing."

The largest crow said nothing else, but to Issei's mild shock, it immediately turned. And he quickly realized it wasn't just the largest one, either. While the others did not move their feet, they _did_ go right back to picking at their meal of putrefying flesh.

Issei found himself unconsciously walking backwards as he realized that his command had indeed been followed. Step by step, the crows vanished back into the thick fog.

After a few seconds, Issei turned around. Started to walk and almost stumbled over his own feet and a half-destroyed cardboard box. He barely noticed; all his attention was on this new bit of information as he plodded out of the alley. Issei's breaths were coming fast now, coming at a speed that his run here hadn't forced them to even approach.

He could speak to crows. He could _command_ the damn things. And they'd _listen_.

As Issei approached the mouth of the alley, a fragment of his thoughts he barely recognized as his conscious mind forcibly stopped him. Even as the feeling of shock left him wanting to scream obscenities into the haze, his own voice, crystalline and icy, tried to shout that feeling down.

And for almost ten long minutes, Issei stood there. Second by second, that cold voice's good sense began to overcome his immediate emotions. The surprise weakened, to the point that his breath slowly, ever so slowly, started to drop back to normal.

At some point, his arm extended and pressed itself against the alleyway wall. The yellowed stone was slightly wet from the fog and Issei himself wasn't much drier. There was no sweat, but the moisture in the air had soaked itself into his clothes regardless.

Issei paid the wetness in his clothes no mind as his breath finally came back under control and the feelings of immediate, terrified shock faded. That wasn't to say that the shock was gone. It was still there, gripping his chest like a vice. But if nothing else, Issei thought he'd just about be able to process the thought while keeping the air inside his lungs.

As he started to truly think about the few words he'd shared with the crows, Issei tried to push aside the obvious explanation. He tried to ignore the words of the note and what they warned of. His hands reached up to his face, fingers massaging his forehead in a circular motion, then dropped to his eyelids.

The stinging of his eyes as they were pushed back into their sockets behind the flaps of skin was almost gratifying, really. An assurance that it was all real. That he wasn't crazy. He could still feel pain. It came as, when and where his mind expected. That had to count for something, right?

Issei tried to force himself to seize onto that thought. Yes, he was still sane. At least mostly.

"I can talk to crows," Issei said, in that same experimental manner that he'd acknowledged his own change in species a few nights past. He said it again. A third time, a fourth and a fifth. And as he repeated himself, the sensation of earth-rending shock began to fade.

Acceptance didn't creep in quite so easily this time, though. Some hint of surprise remained, not near so extreme as the immediate feelings but still not quite regarding the reality, either. Issei wasn't entirely sure what it was, but something else, some other question and feeling nagged at him, not letting the surprise leave him entirely. It was something he couldn't have put into words if he'd been asked to.

But after nearly a quarter of an hour of standing there at the mouth of the alley, Issei finally summoned up the will to move his feet again. His pace was slow, a far cry from the full-out run he'd used to get to this point, as he walked back towards his home. The thick fog drenched the street, and Issei briefly wondered to himself just how he had managed to spy anybody in the mist.

Had he really imagined it? Had it just been some illusion cooked up by his own brain, addled just a bit by sleepiness and his desire for answers? Light could play some convincing tricks on the eyes. Was that what had happened? A bit of light, combined with a brain just drowsy enough to have its vision fooled?

Issei felt his teeth grit, and the frustration began to well up all over again at yet another dead end. Even if it had been real, Issei knew full well that he couldn't possibly find the figure in the fog. They were long gone, and Issei didn't have the tiniest idea which direction. He'd have needed an entire group to help him search the town, to find this figure who he didn't even have the most basic description for.

And then Issei's pace stopped cold. An instant later, he turned and jogged back towards the mouth of the alley, mentally smacking himself the whole way.

Issei swallowed as he approached the entrance to the alley for a third time. His thoughts started to run around, trying to work out exactly how to present himself, what to say, and other such things, before the absurdity of what he was doing slapped him in the face.

He was about to give a set of commands to _crows_, of all things. And they'd apparently obey _him_. How much did it matter how confident he sounded or if he stood in the right pose or whatever?

Issei could hear the rustling as he entered the alley again. As he walked, it grew louder, and soon enough, Issei could see the crows again. The crows had shifted around a bit, but that was all; none had left and no new ones had joined them.

Another trickle of saliva slid down Issei's throat, and he forced him to shake away both his nervousness and the burn of the thirst.

"Rescind that order," Issei said, trying to sound confident, but his voice came out as a low mutter. "I have something I need you to do."

For just a fraction of a heartbeat after the words left his lips, the crows did not react, and Issei felt a burst of panic flood his veins. Panic and an odd validation.

Then the crows all stopped pecking at the carcass and looked towards him once more. That same impression pushed itself onto Issei's mind, that sensation of being the center of attention. Which, he supposed, he now was, despite his audience being nothing more than a group of birds.

The largest crow of the group, the same one as before, stepped towards Issei.

"What are your orders?" it asked, repeating itself a third time. If it was in any way angry or offended at its meal being interrupted again, its voice didn't show it.

Issei's eyes quickly traveled over the crows, counting them. His initial estimate had been roughly correct, with six in total. Before the largest crow could repeat itself, Issei spoke. "I want you to break into pairs," Issei said, trying to keep his brain ahead of his words. "Line yourselves up."

The crows did so, even separating slightly by twos, just as he'd asked. Issei pointed to the leftmost pair. "You two, I want you to go up to the intersection to the right of the alley, then take a left. Follow the road for… say, three kilometers. Look for…"

Issei cut himself off for a few heartbeats, thinking on the order he was about to give. In the span of a few moments, he thought and re-thought it a dozen times, before finally settling on something that he could only hope would be appropriate.

"Look for anyone who looks like they're not where they should be. People walking with nowhere to go, that sort of thing. Once you've surveyed the three kilometers, fly back this way. The white house on the left side past the intersection. Find the second floor window, right side of the house. I'll be waiting for you there. Got all that?"

There was no verbal confirmation, but the crows immediately took flight, zipping down the alley and vanishing into the fog. Issei hoped that that was a good sign.

His attention turned next to the middle pair, whom he directed to go straight ahead. The last, the one with the largest crow, he sent to the right.

Not one crow spoke, but as the last tail feather disappeared from sight, Issei found himself smiling. It wasn't a smile of amusement, but more of satisfaction.

After a few breaths, though, Issei remembered where he was and walked back out, as much to escape the stench of decay as anything else. His walk back down the foggy street was brisk, blurry orange street lights providing illumination he didn't need.

Sneaking back into his house proved just as simple as sneaking out. As he slowly ascended the stairs, he stopped from time to time, using his hearing to reassure himself that he could still hear his father snoring like a bear.

A few minutes after giving the orders, Issei was back in his room and seated in his desk chair. Any feelings of sleepiness he might have had were gone now, and his mind buzzed with the torture of anticipation. All he could do now was wait for the return of his new eyes in Kuoh.

He could only hope the news they brought would be worth the wait.

* * *

A few minutes after Issei went into his house, another student returned to their own home. Her eyes burned with the sleepiness of a person who'd been yanked out of bed far too early and been forced to stay awake far too long after that.

Akeno had expected to return to the luxurious apartment in which she dwelt and find it dead quiet, lights off. As soon as she opened the door, however, her eyes were subjected to a new sting.

The light above the dining table was still on, and the person who sat at it had obviously been waiting for quite some time.

"You're back, Akeno?" Rias asked.

"Yeah," Akeno replied. "Kiba relieved me."

"So?"

Akeno blinked, taking an instant to realize what her King wanted from her. Once she did, a slow breath trickled out of her. "Well, something _did_ happen during my shift. Hyoudou left his house."

Rias' head jerked slightly, and the eyes of King and Queen met. Akeno did not keep her king waiting. "I'll tell you what I can - he was in a hurry. And… well, honestly, Rias, I think Issei might well be able to outrun Kiba. His running was that fast."

"No surprise," Rias muttered. "Devils get Demonic Power, vampires get physical enhancements. Did you keep up?"

"Somewhat," Akeno said. "I had to keep my distance, of course, and the fog didn't help. But that's where it gets really weird. Hyoudou just… stopped all of a sudden. He looked around for a bit, then turned around and walked into an alley. Then he walked back out and, I kid you not, he just stood there for… ten, fifteen minutes? Don't know what he was doing. Then he walks out and suddenly turns around and goes back in. Outside of apparently chasing out a few birds, though, I can't figure out what he was doing in there."

"You checked the alley?"

Akeno nodded. "There was nothing in the alley but some garbage. Definitely not any bodies."

Rias bit her lip. "He might have been in communication with somebody. His master, maybe? Maybe something happened between them and Issei. Did you hear him talking?"

Akeno scratched the back of her head. "Well… I think so, but I couldn't get close enough to hear anything. Not without risking detection. My footsteps would've bounced off the alley walls and alerted him. I'm sorry, Rias."

"No, it's not your fault," Rias said, shaking her head. "At least we know one thing - Issei Hyoudou definitely knows about his fog manipulation abilities. You _did_ say there was thick fog in that area of town, right?"

Akeno nodded. "Quite unusual for Kuoh. Weather reports have taken notice, too."

"Well, I'd say it's safe to assume he's definitely hiding something. Just need to figure out what, exactly… you said there weren't any bodies, after all. I'll pass the information about that alley on to Sona and the others. We might want to bug that place. Just in case he _does_ use it for communications."

Akeno nodded again. "Now, Rias, if you don't mind…" She tipped her head slightly, indicating the hallway that lead to their respective bedrooms.

Rias nodded back. "Good night, Akeno."

"Good night, Rias."

* * *

_**A/N: I'm not particularly sure what the living situation for Rias and Akeno was prior to them moving in with Issei in canon. Given how close Rias and Akeno are shown to be, though, I don't think it's that crazy that they might share an apartment.**_


	8. Chapter 8

The wait was rather shorter than Issei had expected.

When he'd walked into his room, he'd believed it would be quite a while before the crows returned. Immediately, he'd changed back into his night clothes, just in case his parents should decide to check on him. Sure, that hadn't happened in years, but what harm could taking precautions do?

After, he'd thrown the window open and sat down at his computer to wait for the return of his little feathered minions.

Issei cringed at the sound of his computer coming out of its sleep, amplified as it was by his own hearing. His rational mind knew from experience that there was no chance whatsoever that it would wake his parents, but he couldn't totally kill the worry regardless. The light was equally annoying, biting into the pleasant darkness as it did, but his eyes adjusted after a few seconds. After muting the volume, Issei opened up the internet.

He'd been idly scrolling through pages for no more than a few minutes, though, when a slight swoosh of air hit his ears. Issei's head spun.

Two crows stood on his windowsill, neither so much as ruffling a feather.

After a second, Issei stood from his chair and crossed the distance to the crows.

"Which way did I send you two?" he whispered. "Keep your voices down."

"We were instructed to go to the left," one said. Its voice was a strange warbled tone, something between a chirp and a caw that sounded bizarre and yet conveyed no emotion. "We saw no one."

A slight hum left Issei, and after a moment's consideration, he nodded. "All right. Thanks."

"What is your next order?" the same crow asked, not acknowledging that Issei had shown them gratitude.

Issei shook his head. "Don't have one. You're free to go."

Without speaking again, the crows turned, jumped from the windowsill, and took off into the foggy night, leaving Issei to stew in his renewed frustration.

Almost as soon as they had gone, the next pair came back, this one having gone right. The ones sent forward showed up just as he had begun to ask them about what they'd seen.

Each speaking in the same warbling voice as the first crow, they politely informed him that they'd seen nothing out of the ordinary. They each asked exactly the same question of him as the first two; Issei gave each the same answer.

After closing the window, his fists balled up and he threw himself onto his bed.

He was under no illusions; even with nothing more about the figure in the fog, even as tired as he was, there was no chance he'd be able to go back to sleep, not anytime soon. Not after what he'd learned.

Talking to animals was an ability that he'd always associated with tall tales, the sort of power one outgrows thoughts of and comes to regard as childish. And all of a sudden, it was real. Instead of wonder and joy, however, Issei was left feeling cold, and it wasn't just from the bits of moisture that still clung to his hair mixing with the air conditioning. On one level, he supposed he was still shocked. On another, he didn't care.

It was the figure in the fog that occupied his thoughts, those thoughts riddled with speculation. He knew the speculation was useless, but he couldn't help it. He might not have been really able to sleep, but the exhaustion had worn away any restraint that kept them under control.

He didn't know who they were, had no evidence in any direction. And yet his mind, through some twisting and turning, kept coming back to the same conclusion.

Issei moved suddenly, standing from his bed before dropping to his knees to look for something.

It didn't take long to find what he was looking for, of course. His room had remained spotless aside from that one thing, and while it was already starting to accumulate dust, Issei was able to snatch it out from under his computer desk easily enough.

The note had remained exactly where he'd dropped it a few nights before. His eyes scanned it again.

_Do not resist the craving, or it will drive you mad._

_\- Lady Morrigan_

The words of the note seemed to make the thirst in his throat sear up, and Issei forced himself to move again. He slowly opened his desk drawer and shuffled around the few things that remained within until there was a hole. It was into this hole that he dropped the note, before returning the items to their original positions. He gave it a look, and once he was satisfied that the note could not be seen at a quick glance, he closed the drawer again.

As he'd been shuffling things around, Issei had briefly considered getting rid of the note. It was a piece of information that would, at best, be laughed off, and at worst, would look extremely suspicious if anyone else found it. But something had blocked that impulse, some feeling that left Issei queasy at the thought.

And so he kept it. It seemed unwise even as he thought about it, and yet he did so anyway. For his own peace of mind, he supposed.

* * *

As he'd predicted, Issei wasn't able to get back to sleep, and he'd tossed and turned for barely an hour before he gave up. He instead spent the next three hours on his computer, killing time. Yet there was another purpose, one which he did not admit to himself.

Every second he spent playing the video game Matsuda had loaned him was one second he wasn't left dwelling on thoughts that he could do nothing with. One thought, though, wouldn't go away, and it crawled back into his mind every single time he swallowed.

For the first time in days, Issei was happy when he saw the sun had started to rise again. At least, the higher part of his mind was; the vampire in him wanted nothing more than to avoid the sunlight.

It was when he stood from his computer and turned it off that it all hit him. The drowsiness that he hadn't felt the entire night suddenly crashed into his form. Every single muscle fiber ached. Each eyelid suddenly felt as though it weighed a metric ton.

Yet he still had obligations. Even in his drowsiness, Issei knew that. And like it or not, he'd have to fulfill them.

Issei went through his morning routine like a robot, his mind seeming to have filled with the fog that had clogged the street. Familiarity was his guide through his morning shower and dressing. He said little during breakfast, speaking only when spoken to and only in short sentences. When his mother inquired about the bags under his eyes and how he'd slept, Issei gave a vague answer about having woken up several times during the night. It was a lie, but it was both believable and impossible to verify, and his mother accepted his explanation.

He didn't quite remember brushing his teeth or combing his hair, hazy as his mind was. To Issei's conscious mind, it seemed more as if he had suddenly just appeared on the road to his school when he was abruptly brought back to reality.

Issei blinked at the crow that his eyes had brushed over. Not because the crow stuck out among crows; as far as Issei's eyes could tell, if he'd seen one crow, he'd seen them all. It was more that the crow seemed to be looking at him from its perch atop a telephone wire that hung over the street. And as he looked around, he realized that that crow wasn't alone.

Several stood a bit further down the wire. Another was seated atop a building. Two more on a trash can. And even in his vision, he could see the faint outlines of numerous others on the street.

Issei was almost tempted to ask where all these crows had come from. After all, they hadn't seemed to exist in his town yesterday.

Yet even as he looked at the crows, another part of him knew full well that they hadn't sprung into existence or flown in recently. They had simply been beneath his notice, for the most part.

Issei had lived in Kuoh his entire life. The crow population as a whole had been here for far longer than that. It was just that a few hours ago was the first time that either had paid the other the slightest bit of mind.

Briefly, he considered calling one of the crows down and instructing it pass on a message to stop paying attention to him. Issei rejected that idea within seconds, though. Issei was still unsure just how sapient crows actually were, but even if every single one of them was a completely thinking individual, Issei knew that crows migrated. The crows he now saw around him were almost certainly different crows than the ones he'd made use of hours earlier. The message would probably get lost, and besides that, Issei didn't want to be seen by somebody else. He had enough problems; potentially being seen as the crazy teenager who thought he could speak to crows wouldn't make life any easier.

Then he was distracted by something else that he had begun to notice. Just like the crows, it had been true beforehand; he simply hadn't noticed it.

The sun wasn't very high in the sky at all, and yet the thick, soupy fog of hours ago was gone without a trace.

* * *

Despite his surprise, it didn't take long for the haze to come back. Every sense was dull, his eyes unfocused and glazed over. Even the thirst seemed a bit distant. Only when he found himself at Kuoh Academy's front gate did Issei start to come back to reality.

That reality check was prompted by the oddly tiny number of students milling about the courtyard before the main building. Issei was mildly puzzled at that. Was it because of what had happened yesterday? Were parents simply afraid to let their children come back to Kuoh Academy?

It wasn't until he looked up at the clock on the front of the school's main building that he realized that he'd arrived quite a bit earlier than usual. He was fine with that, of course; most days he'd have regarded that as more time to chat with Matsuda and Motohama about their latest visual novel or _Kaben Rider Pinky_ film. This morning, though, Issei suspected that there would be an impromptu short nap at his desk. Hopefully that would be enough to get through the day without passing out in class.

That plan came to an abrupt end when he walked into the main building.

Located just inside the front door to the central building, in front of the main hallway and staircases that lead to the second and third floors, was a set of tables that had been pushed together. These tables, covered with a thick black tablecloth, were being fussed over by several female students.

Issei recognized two of the students, one behind the desk and one in front of it. All three looked up as he approached, and as he approached, . Most mornings, Issei supposed he probably would have wilted under those expressions.

"What's this?" Issei asked to none of them in particular.

"_This_," Murayama replied, every word laced with venom, "is the memorial display the Kendo Club is putting together on behalf of the student body."

"For Saji?"

The Kendo club captain gave an annoyed snort. "Obviously. Who else would it be for, Hyoudou?"

Issei craned his neck around Murayama, and sure enough, there was a photo of Saji, as well as flowers and even a wreath. Issei wasn't educated enough to know exactly what type at a glance, nor awake enough to hazard a guess. His focus instead went to the boy in the photograph.

Blonde hair, grey eyes, and a rather average appearance. It was more of an idea of what he had looked like than Issei had had, he supposed. Nothing special about his appearance, but it was something.

And now he was dead.

Issei found something surreal about looking at that photo. Having a name was one thing, but having a face to put to it changed things in a way that Issei couldn't quite put into words.

"You need any help?" Issei asked. Even as he asked the question, he wasn't totally sure why he did so. Impulse had forced the words out. Yet, at the same time, Issei didn't regret his words, either.

"No, Hyoudou, we don't," snapped Katase, her pink hair twirling slightly as she turned her head to glare at him.

None of the other students working on the display spoke a word in Issei's defense or to stop Katase or Murayama's harshness. Issei didn't expect them too, either; he was fully aware of how the student body saw him. Some days that almost bothered him.

Issei took one last look at the portrait, the same questions running around his head about his fellow student's death, but after a moment he just gave a shake of his head.

"See you two in class." At that, Katase and Murayama appeared nauseous, and Issei gave a weary smirk. And then he took a breath, and something hit his nose.

He almost didn't notice it at first. It smelled a lot like any other student, plus an additional bit of sweat from running around and dealing with the display. Yet, beneath that, there was something else. Some other scent.

But it took no more than a second for the scent to pass out of his mind, and Issei had started to walk away and towards one of the staircases when he heard a new voice muttering.

"You're disgusting."

Issei turned back, eyebrow raised, to find one of the other girls was facing him. Issei didn't know which member of the Kendo club it was, though he would've guessed she was probably a first-year. Her hands were balled into fists as she glared at him with a force that was almost tangible.

"What?" Issei asked, more a tad confused than annoyed.

"You heard me, Hyoudou," the girl spat. "I mean, I always knew you were a piece of crap. You spied on us enough to prove that much. But one of your classmates died not two days ago and the first thing you try to do when you see us setting up a memorial for him is to try and spy on us again?"

"Huh?"

The girl suddenly moved, stalking up to him. Her arm swung out and gestured towards the table with the flowers and the wreath and Saji's portrait. "You don't even care, do you?" she asked, accusation thick in her voice.

Before Issei could respond, though, Murayama had practically sprinted towards her fellow Kendo Club member. For just a moment, the scent passed through Issei's nose again, though it was forgotten just as quickly.

"Misaki," Murayama said, voice suddenly quite patient, "he's not worth it. Just let it drop."

"But-"

"We all know Hyoudou's awful," Murayama added, tossing in a glare of her own as she did so, "but pick a fight with him and we'll all be in trouble."

Misaki tried to protest, but Murayama practically dragged her away from Issei and back towards the memorial stand. Once there, Murayama gave him a look of pure disdain and gave him a rude, dismissive wave, knuckles towards him, even as Katase gave a confused look towards Murayama.

Issei gave a dismissive wave of his own, and started towards the staircase again. This time, he was not interrupted.

He couldn't say he was all that surprised by how the Kendo club had reacted. He knew that this whole incident would go down among the membership of the Kendo club as the time that Issei had tried to exploit a classmate's death to sneak peeks up their skirts.

Issei knew better than trying to convince them he'd been genuinely willing to help. Sure, he wasn't exactly wracked with grief at Saji's death, but he was hardly alone in that. Kuoh Academy was a school of hundreds, maybe a thousand or even more. The majority of the student body hadn't known Saji to any degree, and a good chunk hadn't even been aware that he had existed.

But Issei knew that double standards would definitely be at play. Not that he cared all that much, frankly. His mind wasn't working at enough of a capacity for that.

Issei was the first one to make it into his classroom. He threw his things down on the desk, laid his head down, and shut his eyes.


	9. Chapter 9

"Issei? Issei!"

Something pushed and prodded at Issei's arm. He groaned, willing it to go away.

"Issei, wake up!"

The prodding became more insistent. Still Issei refused to move, hoping against hope that who or whatever it was would just leave him alone.

"Damn it, Issei!"

Pain lanced through Issei's skull, and finally his eyes shot open as his head jerked up. His eyes instantly started to water against the light, but he could still glare quite effectively at the person standing next to his desk.

"The hell?" Issei grunted, furious at having his nap interrupted. "The fuck was that for, Matsuda?"

"Ms. Kobayashi's going to be here any fucking minute, Issei!" Matsuda said.

The anger instantly washed out of Issei, despite the stinging of his scalp. "Oh, shit. Thanks." Without waiting for a response, Issei instantly began digging through his school supplies, pulling out things he'd needed. Matsuda might have said something, but Issei wasn't paying enough attention to notice it if he had.

Issei had passed out almost the second his head had touched the wood, and while the nap hadn't been more than half an hour or so, Issei felt somewhat rejuvenated. The numb, heavy feeling had eased off somewhat, and while his eyes still drooped, he could at least keep them open, more or less. For now, at least.

Matsuda's information was correct, of course; Issei's binder and pencils had just found the desktop when Ms. Kobayashi made her typically thunderous entrance.

Issei shifted in his seat, forcing himself to sit up straight, a pulse of a dull ache going through him as he did so.

"Good morning, everyone," Ms. Kobayashi said in her usual unenthusiastic tone. If there'd been any sadness about the death of Saji, it was gone now, if her immediate diving into the math lesson was anything to go by.

Issei did everything in his power to pay attention. He refused to let his mind wander, doing his best to keep even the thoughts of the last few days from creeping in. He copied notes and asked questions where he could fit them in. He tried to make sense of formulas and equations as they came at him, forcing himself to engage with the class. It was in this way that Ms. Kobayashi's lesson came and went without incident. A science lesson and then language classes went the same way, though by the time lunch rolled around, Issei had started yawning again.

It was in history class that things fell apart.

Like most who fall asleep in the middle of something important, Issei didn't notice it was happening. He didn't realize that his hand wasn't moving on the paper anymore, or that Ms. Asanuma's voice had started to sound quite fuzzy or even that his eyes had shut. Only when he felt something prod him from behind did Issei become conscious. And with a start, his eyes finally opened again.

It took no more than a moment before he realized the entire class was dead silent, every head turned in his direction. Heart sinking, his eyes turned to Ms. Asunama.

His history teacher's eyes were cutting a glare at him, lips pressed together in a thin line. Issei tried to stammer out an apology, but Ms. Asunama just shook her head.

"Mr. Hyoudou, go stand at the back of the room for the rest of the class," she said, cutting him off. "And you can go to the student council after school today. I'm sure they can find something for you to clean."

Issei's heart sank.

Wordlessly, Issei stood up from his chair, gathered his things, and marched to the back. Every student's head turned to follow him as he walked.

Once Issei had taken a position at the back, sufficiently humiliated, Ms. Asunama continued the lesson as though nothing had happened. Soon enough, the lesson had ended, and Ms. Asunama left.

Luckily for him, none of the other students said anything when Issei quietly slipped back into his seat before the next teacher arrived.

* * *

When the final bell rang, Issei briefly considered ignoring Ms. Asunama outright. All he wanted to do was go home and get caught up on sleep.

He didn't entertain the thought for very long, though. Disobeying his teacher would just get him into much worse trouble, both with the school and with his parents. It potentially being ignored was a no-go as well; Ms. Asunama would've informed the student council long before the end of the day, and the student council ran like clockwork. A student who didn't show up to them when they should _would_ catch hell for it in short order.

And thus, as the other students were filing out of the school in groups, Issei was dragging his feet towards the student council office. It was a route he knew quite well; he'd been to this particular office more than a few times. The student council office was located deep in the bowels of one of the secondary buildings. It was an old, spare classroom from decades past, one of the few on campus without windows.

As Issei pushed the door open, he supposed he was at least somewhat grateful for that. The sunlight would've just made things even more uncomfortable for him.

During his walk to the student council office, Issei had been hoping - nay, _praying_ \- that Sona Shitori would not be behind the desk. Not because he feared physical violence or verbal abuse. It was her glare.

It was the sort of expression that could make a man's blood freeze in its veins, no matter how many times they saw it. Issei would've rather Sona just beaten him with a stick than have her glare at him for upwards of several minutes while lecturing him. That would've taken far less out of him.

Alas, his prayers were ignored, and Sona Shitori was indeed seated behind the desk. And indeed, her glare that seemed to be able to vivisect a man was fixed on him from the instant he opened the door.

"Hello, Mr. Hyoudou." The greeting she gave him was frosty, as expected. He'd been in front of this young woman many times, and it was never for anything good. "I'm told you fell asleep in class."

Issei swallowed. "Umm… yes, that's correct."

"Any explanation you'd like to offer?"

"I… didn't sleep well last night."

"Up too late watching porn?"

"N-No!" Issei exclaimed, not having expected her to be anywhere near that bluntly forward. "Nothing like that! I just, uh, couldn't fall asleep. That's all. I tossed and turned a lot, but I didn't actually get tired until it was an hour or so until I had to get up."

Sona's lips creased in a thin line. "Very well. I suppose it's not my business what you do in your time outside of school if it's nothing illegal. And staying up late is not. That said, I would advise you to take whatever measures are necessary to ensure that this incident isn't repeated. As for your punishment…" Sona's fingers linked tip-to-tip on the desk in front of her. "The kendo club is apparently planning to clean and reorganize their storage closet this afternoon. You'll be aiding them however they ask." Her eyes gave a dangerous flash. "And as if I need to say it, do _not_ try to indulge your perverse habits. Your desires are your own outside of the schoolhouse, but I will _not_ have you acting on them within it."

"I understand," Issei replied, trying not to let her hear his aggravation.

"Very well. Get to it."

Issei gave his own, more polite farewell, before turning, and stopping halfway.

An odd scent had hit his nose - one that he swore was familiar and that he'd smelled recently, but that he couldn't quite place. His head turned back to Sona, who had leaned down to return to her paperwork or whatever it was she was doing.

In an instant, Sona stopped again and looked up, fixing Issei with her blood-curdling glare once again. "Is there something else I can do for you, Mr. Hyoudou?"

The scent forgotten under the weight of the glare, Issei said, "No, thank you. I'm sorry." He gave her a second farewell, and before she could reply, he left the office.

* * *

Issei heard the kendo club practicing long before he saw them. Loud _clacks_ rang in his ears as bamboo swords crashed into one another and a loud, authoritative voice barking orders and advice.

The room itself was located in yet another building, the mostly-empty floor wooden and neatly polished. Bright fluorescent lights hung above, bathing the entire room in an even white. Atop the sides of the walls were a series of small windows, but there was no visible way for students to reach them.

The kendo club had seemingly just started when he arrived, which Issei supposed made sense. He also supposed it made sense that every single member of the kendo club immediately turned and glared at him the instant they noticed that Issei was in the same room as them.

Issei shrugged their hateful stares off easily enough. None of them were even a fraction as scary as Sona's.

"What are you doing here, Hyoudou?" the girl from the early morning snapped. Misaki, was that her name? "Sorry, no perverts allowed."

As other voices went up in agreement, the anger burned a bit hotter, though Issei did everything in his power to keep it out of his voice. "Sona Shitori told me I had to come here to clean out your storage closet or whatever. Take it up with her."

After a few seconds, another voice called over the noise. "Quiet, all of you."

Issei's eyes darted to the speaker - the captain. Murayama.

Murayama fixed him with an annoyed stare. "Hyoudou's telling the truth. The student council president asked after class if there was anything that would work for a detention." Her face screwed up. "She didn't tell me who was serving it until after she'd dumped him on us. Don't worry, he won't be anywhere near us for what he's doing." She flexed a finger towards him, in an obvious command to follow her.

Follow her he did, into a hallway leading off from the kendo club's practice hall. He didn't say anything; his mind was starting to fill up with haze again, even considering the movement.

One bend of the hallway lead them to a door, which Murayama swung open.

"_This_ is what you'll be doing."

The room, as far as Issei could see, was indeed a storage closet. To his dismay, it wasn't small, extending back quite a distance and not being the thinnest closet he'd ever seen, either. Making it even worse were the numerous containers and boxes, all scattered around in a hasty series of piles or stacked randomly on shelves.

Issei swore he could hear a few hints of smugness in Muryama's voice as she gave instructions.

"See all these boxes and containers? Pull out all of them - yes, _all_ of them - and wipe them down. Once that's done, I want you to give the inside of the room a good, deep scrub. Walls and floor. Come get me once that's finished and I'll explain how we've decided to reorganize this room. As for cleaning supplies…" She stepped away from the door then and walked another few doors down the hall to another door, which she again tapped. "This closet should have everything you need in it."

With that, Murayama walked back down the hall, only to turn back just before the corner and add, "Oh, and be careful with the boxes in the closet. Some of what's in them is a bit fragile and some are pretty heavy."

Issei swore he saw the ghost of a smile playing at her lips as she left, not bothering to bid him any kind of farewell. But after a moment, he shook his head and let out a breath.

"Let's get this over with…" he muttered, before reaching for the closest container to the door in the storage room.

* * *

Murayama had been overstating the heaviness of the boxes; Issei had no difficulty lifting a single one. Within fifteen minutes, he'd managed to pull out all of the boxes, containers and other knick-knacks that had piled up in the storage room.

It was the cleaning process that took quite a while. Not wiping down the containers - that was the easy part. The room itself was the problem, as it clearly hadn't been thoroughly cleaned in quite some time, and it didn't help that the musty room left his eyes watering.

If there was one thing that Issei hated about being a vampire almost as much as craving blood, it was his sense of smell. Even as he scrubbed his palms nearly raw to get some stains out of the tile, the smell of the heavy-duty soap and water in such a confined space nearly drove him to retch. And it wasn't as though there was a counterbalance to it that Issei could see. Sure, his hearing improvements had been painful at first, but it made it easy to keep track of things going on around him and he hadn't needed anything to be repeated to him. Sunlight was as painful as ever, but he could avoid it or mostly mitigate it.

Thus far, though, the sole thing his sense of smell had been good for was giving himself headaches.

Needless to say, he was grateful when he finally finished up with the floor and could dump the water down the drain in the janitor's closet.

He had just started spraying the walls down with cleaner when a voice suddenly slammed through his mind, and he nearly threw the bottle in the air.

"Aren't you finished yet, Hyoudou?"

Issei's head spun to find Murayama, who had somehow appeared in the doorway without his noticing. "No," he replied. "Why? What's the rush?"

"Well, practice is just about over, among other things."

"It is?" The question was a genuine one; Issei hadn't been keeping track of time, preferring to throw himself into the mindless work. Murayama didn't seem to take it that way, however, given how annoyed her tone grew.

"Yeah, Hyoudou. You've been at this for almost two hours. Hurry up, will you? I can't go home until everything is put away. In here."

"I'll finish when I finish," Issei snapped, the annoyance coming back, even stronger than last time. "You'll just have to wait. And standing there isn't helping." He began to scrub the wall with a deliberate vigor as a sign that he was finished talking.

Murayama simply huffed and walked away.

* * *

It took another hour to clean the walls and shelves to Issei's satisfaction. At some point in that interim, he heard the sound of the kendo club coming by to store away their equipment in the containers Issei had cleaned at the start. By the time he'd finished, everyone but Murayama was long gone, and Murayama's patience had worn thin.

Her directions, which mostly consisted of "put this here" and "put that there", were short, curt and thick with forced politeness. A couple of times, she offered to help him with the boxes, but he declined; none of the boxes were heavy, after all. She greeted these declines with little more than a snort before moving on to the next instruction.

Fifteen more minutes went by before it was all said and done. Then, Issei was left standing by the door as Murayama took one last look around. It was, as Issei expected, a short look, and Murayama quickly decided that it was satisfactory.

"Well, Hyoudou, I suppose you deserve my thanks. You did a good job."

"You're welcome," Issei said, not caring in the least that she was thanking him or bothering to disguise the tiredness in his tone. "Can I leave now?"

"I'd call that out, but for the fact that I'm of the same mind." She nodded to him in clear dismissal, and Issei was more than happy to leave.

As he stepped out of the building, he was actually rather relieved to find that the sun had set. He was as sleepy as he'd been all day, but Issei actually found himself looking forward to the stroll home. A night's walk beneath the stars followed by dinner sounded like an excellent way to remedy what had not been a particularly good day.

Then, he rounded the corner, and any thoughts of food or sleepiness were swept cleanly out of his mind.

The fog had returned. Not naturally, not in a long, slow process that is barely noticeable except in hindsight to the eye. It was coming towards him in thick wall down the road, infecting every crevice and alleyway it passed. It came at him slowly and without roar or sound, but with the relentless movement of a train.

Issei found his mouth hanging slightly open as the fog hit him. There was no wind, no pain of any kind, just a thick layer of fog over the city streets where there hadn't been any previously.

But what he had seen in those brief seconds was all he needed for another puzzle piece to form and fall into place.

The fog was unnatural. That was obvious and not up for discussion. Issei immediately dismissed any kind of rational explanation - no weather phenomena would produce what he'd just seen.

Issei sucked in a watery breath as he asked himself the question of the fog's origin. Because whether or not he admitted it to himself, he had a very solid guess as to who was doing it.

The note's words rushed back at him.

_Do not resist the craving, or it will drive you mad_.

Issei gave several short and desperate shakes of his head. The note itself wasn't what mattered. Not now.

Issei's head snapped around, desperately looking for a crow, and it wasn't long before he spotted one. Even in the misty haze, Issei managed to pick one out, standing on a streetlight high above.

Walking over, Issei took another quick look around, looking for anyone who might see what he was about to do. Spying no one (though that said little, given the fog), Issei spoke.

"Hey, you."

The crow's head immediately turned to look at Issei.

"I have orders for you," Issei said, hoping that that would be enough to convince the crow.

Fortunately, it was, and within seconds the crow was at his feet, staring up at him expectantly.

Issei swallowed. Just hours ago, he'd considered this option and discarded it. Yet here he was anyway, without other options. "Can you pass a message to the other crows in the town? Any ones you find, I mean?"

"Yes." The word was short, sharp and emotionless, but it was enough.

"Fine. If it's an order, will they obey it?"

"Yes," the crow repeated.

Issei nodded. "All right, here's the order. Go search the town. Look for a woman…"

Issei's voice died in his throat as he ran into a new problem - there was nothing to go on. If "Lady Morrigan" had ever shown her face to him, he sure as hell didn't remember it. Neither could he even begin to guess how she might dress, or how she might move. Yet Issei did not want to give the same order that he had last time. Too many people were still on the street for that to be of any use - no doubt there'd be quite a few women around the town in places they typically weren't.

The pause lasted almost fifteen seconds before Issei found himself settling on something that felt a bit broad. Yet he couldn't think of anything else.

"For any woman you can find with red eyes. Pass that message on. Report back here if you find anything."

The same as the previous times, the crow flew away without another word.

* * *

No crows found their way to him for a very long time - at least an hour, if Issei's phone could be trusted. And in that time, Issei's mind found itself going a tad crazy as he stared into the fog.

The sleepiness had drained from him, anticipation replacing it in waves as random possibilities entered his mind and his brain fixated on them, talking itself in and out of their plausibility.

Lady Morrigan had left already. She was involved. She wasn't. She was messing with him. Trying to scare him. She had no intention of him knowing about this.

As the minutes dragged on, Issei found himself fidgeting and twitching. Every too-loud sound made him jump. The few pedestrians who passed him each made his teeth grind.

When the warbled voice spoke, Issei felt as though his heart would rupture.

"We have found a woman with red eyes."

Issei whirled to look behind him. A crow stood on the bar of a sign extending from a building wall. His inexpert eyes left Issei unsure whether or not it was the same crow, and the voice provided no clues, either. Every crow's voice sounded exactly the same to Issei's untrained ears.

But that didn't matter now.

Issei nodded, before he gave a quick look to his left and right. Satisfied that no one was coming, he spoke.

"Where?"

"The church."

Issei blinked. Of all the answers he'd been expecting, _that_ was not one of them. "You're sure?"

"Yes."

Issei swallowed. "Okay."

"What is your next order?"

"None. You're free to go. I can handle things from here."

As always, there was no acknowledgment or thanks. In seconds, the crow had disappeared into the fog.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Issei did the same.


	10. Chapter 10

Issei had been to the Catholic church in Kuoh many times, most of those times before it had been abandoned. Irina and her family had always been religious, and had often invited him to go to church with them. And on a lot of Sundays, Issei hadn't been able to justify not going; Issei privately suspected that the Shidou family's offers were as much his own parent's doing, an excuse to get him out of their hair for a morning.

It wasn't that he _hated_ it. Well, actually, he did hate it, but not because he had an issue with Christianity. He didn't then and didn't now. It was just that church was so _boring_. So much time spent sitting, listening to somebody at a pulpit talk about religious subjects that went clear over Issei's head, all while being stuck in the most uncomfortable seats Issei could ever recall sitting in.

He'd never acted up during those sessions, lest he get himself in trouble with his parents. But he didn't miss _that_ aspect to his friendship with Irina. He'd never thought he would come back to this church.

Issei bolted through the twists and turns that lead to the church, which lay a few kilometers from his home and Kuoh Academy alike. More than once he nearly blundered into someone; Issei could only dread the injuries another person might suffer in a collision. The speed at which he moved was even faster than the early hours of this morning. Hazy orange streetlights and blurry car headlights rushed by him as he streaked through the foggy streets.

As he ran, the buildings spread out. Trees began to grow thicker, in larger patches. By the time he arrived at the church, they had become more common than the buildings.

The stone that the church was constructed from might have been white at some point, but it was long since stained gray-brown by years of dirt and neglect. Vines had begun to crawl up the sides, and the large grove of trees that surrounded it had grown out of control, now thick with underbrush. The concrete path that had once been so lovingly maintained was equally overgrown as anything else, cracks having appeared in the stone from the freezing and thawing of ice. Issei supposed that the only reason nobody had bothered to tear the church down was because of its remoteness; the church was the only building on this street, and this street stuck the church almost a kilometer from any other buildings. There was no reason for anyone to come up here, really.

Issei's pulse raced as he walked through the fog and towards the church. His breathing was heavy, and not just from his lengthy run. All the bravado went out of him as he walked towards the building and he struggled just to keep on his feet.

He'd just been considering how he might even begin confronting "Lady Morrigan" when a new scent hit his nose, one stronger than the earth and rot that he'd been trying to ignore. The new smell lovely, the strength of the odor appealing rather than overwhelming.

But at the same time, Issei's heart nearly tore free from his chest as he stared towards the front door, which hung wide. He knew what it was that he was smelling. Oh, did he know that smell.

Issei wanted to turn and run. He wanted little more than to flee and forget about all this. Get dinner and some sleep, get back to his life.

Instead, he grit his teeth and walked towards the door and the overpowering smell of blood.

The smell grew stronger with every step into the church, and it was but a moment before Issei heard the distinct _slap_ of his foot hitting wetness.

The origin might not have been visible to human eyes, but Issei's could see the truth only too well. His stomach churned at the blood that covered the floor, and even more so at the tiny bits of flesh he could see. Nothing else was on the floor; any pews that once might have stood in the darkened building had long since been removed. All that was left was blood and viscera splashed across the ground and the old pulpit at the head.

Then another sense prodded at him. Whimpers and wet tearing sounds, slow but insistent, crept into his ears. The latter, however, only remained for a brief moment before stopping and being replaced by a new sound.

"Oh…?" The voice was slithering, horrible and left Issei feeling almost as queasy as the gore strewn across the ground. "Is it someone new…?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Issei saw something move. He turned to look, and when he did, it was all he could do not to scream in horror.

Descending on an impossibly thin line of silk was a colossal spider. At least, that was what he believed at first. Then, he saw something else.

From the spider's head extended the upper body of a woman. And as the spider-woman landed in front of him, he could see her bite into something she held.

The urges to scream and vomit mixed together into something that was even harder to contain than either.

The spider-woman tore a chunk of flesh from the human arm she held and then tossed the arm away, its unnaturally pale skin drenched scarlet.

"I take it you're not Lady Morrigan?" Issei asked, trying desperately to keep the fear and disgust out of his voice.

As the spider-woman swallowed, eight red eyes all over her face quirked up. "No, dear. I've no idea who you're referring to." After a moment, she smiled, revealing a mouth that seemed to be lined entirely with fangs. "Oh, trying to act tough, are we?" A chuckle escaped her mouth as the lower part of her, the spider part, began to move its legs and walk towards him. Issei struggled to not step back, even when she drew close.

"Well, no worries," the spider-woman said, a sadistic grin crossing her lips. "Just a little silk and I'll have you tied up nice and tight. Be a good boy for me and I might even kill you _before _I eat you."

A hand reached out, snapped tight around Issei's chin and yanked forwards, and Issei stumbled. In an instant, the other arm pulled him close, almost hugging him. In that same breath, Issei could hear the exoskeleton of the spider creak as it lurched upwards, and a heartbeat after, he felt himself being yanked upward.

Mere inches from the face of the spider-woman and pinned, Issei's heart thundered like a jackhammer. He could smell her breath, reeking of blood, could stare into all of the woman's eyes as they sized up their next meal.

Issei didn't scream then. He couldn't have; his lungs seemed to have been paralyzed. Whether that was because of his own fear or something the spider-woman did was impossible for him to work out.

It wasn't conscious thought that drove him to strain against the arm that held him. Instinct handled that; some things, it seemed, were shared between humans and vampires.

What wasn't was the reaction it elicited.

The spider-woman's eyes all widened at once as Issei wrenched himself out of the iron grip of her arm, and Issei dropped.

For that instant he hung in the air, Issei felt a flash of horror go through him. He was easily four or five meters off the ground! He'd probably snap a limb when he hit the floor!

Then he landed, and his fears were assuaged. Other than a light _thump_, Issei managed to land back on his feet with little more than a mild sting going through him. In the briefest moment, all the fear turned to amazement. Amazement at his own durability, his own strength.

But as movement up above caught his eye, Issei realized he couldn't dwell on that.

There was no elegant descent on a thread this time. Instead, the spider-woman simply let herself fall, her spider half easily landing on its feet as it crashed to the floor.

Her human side snapped up a moment later, all eight eyes narrowed at him. "Well, that's quite interesting. Annoying, too."

Issei swallowed, trying to keep calm as he spoke, to not react to the blood and gore surrounding him and cursing the slight quiver in his voice. "I'm guessing you're a jorōgumo?"

"Did Yasaka send you?" the woman shot back in that same hissing tone, anger obvious even through it.

"Who?"

Issei swore he saw a slight sigh of relief leave the jorōgumo, but it might have been his eyes tricking him. Her human lips curled up in a smile.

"I am what you think I am, yes. And what are you?" The woman's tone had changed. It sounded practically conversational. Friendly, even. If he'd heard it independent of its context, Issei would never have realized it was coming from the throat of a bloodthirsty and murderous creature.

"What?"

All eight of the woman's eyes stared him through. "No human could pull free from me with physical strength alone. What _are_ you?"

Issei took a long, slow breath, and almost immediately regretted it. The smell of blood was almost overpowering, and it took nearly all his mental effort to not start licking up every drop he could see.

Then, with great effort, he forced it out.

"Vampire."

Issei's eyes played no tricks this time - the jorōgumo visibly stiffened as she heard the word, and she did not reply.

But there was no silence. Whimpering shattered it, and Issei realized that the sound hadn't started then. He'd heard it when he had first walked in, but only now did he truly focus on it. Issei's head snapped up, followed the sound as best his ears could tell him. His eyes easily saw straight through the dark.

Three large spiderwebs hung from the ceiling in cocoon-like nets. In two, Issei could see only corpses so badly mutilated that he couldn't even tell what gender either person had been.

The last and closest, however, had a living inhabitant. It was a girl, helplessly stuck in the webs and unable to do more than whimper and cry. Black hair clung to white webs, equally stuck as the skin and clothes. Her face was pressed into the impossibly strong, sticky silk, set in such a way that the girl couldn't even open her mouth to scream. Eyes stared down at the two of them, wide with horror and leaking tears.

Despite the visage and the horror it filled him with, Issei felt something else as he looked at her. It wasn't more than a tiny flicker, but it was there. Not hunger, but recognition. And after a breath or two, it all clicked into place who this girl was.

"Misaki…" Issei breathed, staring at the girl from the kendo club, still dressed in her now-ruined school uniform.

"A vampire, hmm?"

Issei's head snapped back at the sound of the jorōgumo's voice.

A tiny grin cracked his lips as he heard the tension in her voice. Sure, he didn't know quite _what_ it was so afraid of, but still. It was the principle of it.

"Yeah, that's right," Issei replied. His own fear wasn't gone, not even close. Neither was the disgust, the revulsion. But something new was there now, joining those two.

Rage.

"Well then," the jorōgumo said, "that works out well for the both of us, does it not?"

"How so?" Issei asked, craning his neck.

"There's no need for us to be in conflict," the jorōgumo said. "There are thousands of humans in this town - easily enough prey to sate each of our stomachs. And neither of us wants the other's flesh or blood."

The embers of anger were beginning to ignite now, burning the other feelings away. But still, Issei kept his calm as best he could. An idea had occurred to him, and he could only hope it worked.

"Maybe." He traced his jaw with forefinger and thumb, as though considering her offer. "But… I _was_ here first."

The jorōgumo stiffened even further. "I had hoped we could settle into a partnership, but if you wish it, I will move on. Find new hunting grounds."

Issei felt a tiny blast of victory go through, even as the anger burned. His ears and eyes told the truth - the jorōgumo was _definitely_ afraid of him.

"Nah. No need for that. It's more like a… one-time payment."

The human part of the jorōgumo cocked her head. "What is it you desire?"

Issei's head turned upwards and he pointed towards the girl in the webs. "Let her out of the webs. Unharmed." He flashed what he hoped was a suitably cruel-looking grin. "Let's just say that I'm a bit thirsty."

The jorōgumo seemed to swallow in her human throat. "Well, I suppose that's suitable. Though, why unharmed? If you intend to drink her dry anyway, what difference does it make?"

Issei let the false grin widen. "It's more fun if they're not hurt besides the bites. No pain to distract them. You know how it is."

That seemed to relax the jorōgumo a bit, and her human face smiled before letting out a cruel laugh. "We're of one mind, it seems! How refreshing! Yes. Yes, I'll release the girl. I suppose I haven't finished my other meals anyway." A skin-crawling chuckle escaped the jorōgumo. "I _am_ a bit of a glutton."

With that, the jorōgumo scurried towards the wall, spider legs working furiously as it easily climbed the stone towards the web.

Issei had expected that the jorōgumo would tear the web apart with her human hands, or that the spider half might devour it. Yet instead, the web that was sticky and strong enough to easily restrain a man gave easily under her touch, effortlessly coming off of Misaki's skin and clothes without any damage or injury.

When the threads around her mouth were removed, she tried to open it. Tried to scream.

The jorōgumo didn't let her. Her human hand clamped around her jaw and forced it shut, while the other arm kept Misaki's arms pinned. Misaki could do nothing but struggle fruitlessly against the jorōgumo as she gently lowered herself and Misaki to the floor.

"There we are," the jorōgumo cooed. "Out of my web and into his."

Issei took a few steps, and when close enough, covered Misaki's mouth with his own hand and took possession of her arms. He looked down at her, forcing that same cruel grin onto his face even as pleading, crying eyes stared up at him.

"Thank you," he said, tone pleasant despite the anger that now boiled.

"My pleasure. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come." The jorōgumo's voice returned the friendly tone, despite the lingering hiss that underscored every word.

Issei looked up at her, the smile still on his lips, and he nodded. Then he turned, wrenching Misaki around. He tried to be gentle as he kept her pinned.

"Why the rush to leave?" the jorōgumo called after about a dozen steps. "You're free to stay and feed of her here, if you wish."

Issei turned his head back, not letting his fingers slip from his temporary captive. "No, thank you. I like to keep this whole thing private. Just between me and the prey."

"Oh?" the jorōgumo said, smirking and showing her mouth of fangs as she did so. "Have any more… _illicit_ plans for her?"

Issei let out a chuckle he didn't feel, but said nothing before he turned back and continued to drag himself and Misaki out.

Misaki's muffled whimpers grew louder and louder, and she started kicking at his shins and struggling against his arms. Physically, the efforts were fruitless, but Issei felt his heart twist with guilt all the same.

Step by step, meter by meter, Issei dragged Misaki along until they had both been pulled through the door. He forced a few steps around to the right side of the church before he turned around. The trees and thick underbrush crept up around them in the span of a few steps, but only after taking quite a few more than that did Issei stop.

He leaned his head low to Misaki's ear, and right then and there, he was tempted, horribly tempted, to go through with it. Not with violating Misaki in any way. No, that would have been a pointless waste of energy.

Issei breathed in, and he could smell the blood flowing just beneath Misaki's skin. It wasn't like the blood on the church's floor that had teased him prior. It wasn't cold and mixed with the dirt and the earth. What was in her veins right now was warm and fresh, pouring through blood vessels in an endless river with each beat of Misaki's racing heart.

Issei swallowed. And fought the temptation down.

His mouth opened, and rather than bite, he whispered.

"Misaki, right?"  
The thrashing grew worse, but Issei kept her pinned easily.

"Listen," he whispered into the whimpering girl's ear. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm _not _going to hurt you. I'm not going to bite you or do anything else. So when I let you go, please, please, _please_ don't scream. Okay?"

Misaki stopped thrashing, and when he looked down at her from above, she could see a mix of disbelief, shock and fear. But as she was, she could do nothing to respond.

Issei had no choice, and so he took a leap of faith.

His arms and hands let go.

And though she whirled to face him, she did not scream or cry out. Instead, she stared him through, sucking in a few well-deserved breaths.

"Look," Issei said, "like I said, I'm not going to hurt you or do anything to you. So can you do something for me?" Issei didn't let her answer before he continued on breathlessly. "Just stay here for a bit. I'll explain what I can once I'm done. Okay? Make sense?"

Misaki stared at him for a few seconds, still not replying.

"Okay?"

He could see a shiver go through Misaki as she stared at him. Then, she finally spoke, her voice trembling to the point that he could barely understand it.

"What are you going to do?"

Issei gave her what he hoped was a reassuring nod, before pointing back to the church, nearly hidden by the plant life.

"I've gotta kill that thing. Before it kills anyone else."

Misaki gave him a wide-eyed stare that lasted several long seconds, a stare only broken by a nearly imperceptible nod.

He nodded back, and had just begun the walk back to the church when he heard Misaki say something. Unfortunately, the slight crack of a branch drowned it out.

Issei turned around again.

"Thank you," Misaki said, her voice so low that no human could have heard it.

He nodded once more, then resumed his walk back.

* * *

As his feet hit the overgrown path, Issei found himself filled with the insane urge to laugh.

First the vampirism. Then his classmate had been murdered. And now he was going into a long-abandoned church to kill a monster straight out of legends without anything resembling a plan.

This wasn't happening. It couldn't be. This was some fever dream cooked up by a broken mind. He was probably in a straightjacket in a padded cell somewhere, ranting and raving about beasts and monsters. Perhaps his parents were there, wondering why their son had slipped into madness.

Yet that suspicion of his own insanity didn't break his stride towards the church and the lovely smell of blood. And towards the one who'd spilled it.

Madness or not, Issei felt something driving him on. The drowsiness was gone from him now, replaced by a thudding heart and fear and rage. He supposed he was playing the hero by doing this, but he'd have denied it was from a desire for recognition.

Luckily for him, the jorōgumo hadn't gone anywhere. By Issei's eyes, she'd simply returned to feasting on the two corpses that were left hanging in the webs. Yet when she heard him enter again, she made the same graceful descent she had the first time she'd entered.

She greeted him with a friendly smile. "Oh, back again so soon, vampire? Something else I can do for you?"

Issei said nothing before he charged her.

Taken by surprise, the jorōgumo took his first punch directly to her human cheek. Bones and flesh splintered easily underneath Issei's fist, and the jorōgumo was thrown sideways onto her side as Issei landed.

Much faster than he'd expected, though, the jorōgumo righted herself. The woman's face, now a mask of rage and pain, had been almost entirely smashed in on the left side, and from tears in the skin and a nearly crushed eye socket, purple fluid that must have been the jorōgumo's blood flowed freely.

The injury didn't seem to slow it down, though, and it did not give him the satisfaction of showing pain as it stepped out of the path of his next punch.

The spider ejected web from itself, ejected it at a speed and in a way no normal spider would have. It was more like it had been spat than anything else. The spider pulled itself towards the thread, which had stuck on the wall. Spinning in midair, the jorōgumo's human half turned to look at Issei as the spider landed and anchored itself to the stone, out of Issei's immediate reach.

"So," the jorōgumo hissed, "that's what it was. A feint to get a free meal. And now you're back to enforce your claim on this town."

Before Issei's shocked eyes, the jorōgumo began to glow. It was as though hundreds of tiny cracks had appeared in the spider's exoskeleton. From those cracks shone bright orange light.

"But if you refuse to live in peace with me, vampire, then I suppose I'll just have to stake my own claim."

The glow in the exoskeleton brightened, and something began to flow out of the cracks. And as he stared at it, watched it leap up and twist around, Issei's jaw fell open.

The fluid was liquid flame. He had no other way to describe it. Not petroleum that had been ignited, not a spew of lava. It was flame, somehow turned into a liquid state.

Against gravity, the liquid flame crawled upwards, covering every inch of the spider. Issei made no move to stop it, too paralyzed by shock.

It was a glint of light that caught his eye and snapped him back to reality. The light was a reflection of the flames, reflected off of metal. Issei's eyes darted to the side.

The hand of the jorōgumo now held a sword, one that coated itself in the liquid flames even as he watched.

Issei swallowed, all the strength from the jorōgumo's fear of him gone now. With it had gone much of his bravado.

But he couldn't run. Even if he did escape, the jorōgumo would hunt him and those he loved - and how many innocents would die in the process? Moreover, who would _stop_ this creature, if not him? Who could?

A lopsided grin touched the jorōgumo's damaged lips, but it said nothing before it charged. The spider legs threw the entire body forwards at a speed Issei would have thought impossible if he hadn't been there to witness it.

Issei instinctively threw himself to the side, but even as he did, Issei felt himself cry out.

With a simple flick, the jorōgumo had caught him with her sword as he dodged, opening a gash that ran the entire length of his left forearm. The liquid flame on the metal burned itself out almost instantly, but it lasted just long enough for the fire to turn Issei's skin a bright, vivid red.

After an instant, the initial shock of pain passed, and Issei's entire arm no longer needed the flame to feel as though it had been set ablaze.

Tears leaked into the corners of Issei's eyes as the jorōgumo turned, and Issei desperately wanted to let them come freely. Yet he knew he could not. Not now.

The jorōgumo leaped for him again, flame-licked sword swinging. Issei didn't try to dodge left or right, opting instead to jump backwards. The sword swing missed Issei completely this time, the jorōgumo landing heavily in the spot where Issei had been a heartbeat before. A frustrated screech shot up from the jorōgumo, and she had barely landed before she pushed forward, trying to rush him down as she hopped forwards. Another leap back lead to the jorōgumo missing again, though still too close for comfort.

Then the jorōgumo's forward leaps stopped as her human face twisted, and she instead began to walk backwards. Unsure of what else to do, Issei ran forwards again. The jorōgumo hadn't covered her the flesh of her human parts in the liquid flame, and Issei had intended to throw another punch at her face.

But as he drew close, the jorōgumo suddenly flew backwards, and it wasn't until an instant later that Issei realized that the jorōgumo had pulled the same trick as before, yanking itself upwards on a thread of silk. This time, however, it went higher, even further out of his reach.

Issei stopped for a few breaths as he stared the jorōgumo down, trying to work out how he'd get up there. He was so focused on this task, in fact, that he did not notice the spider's chalicera begin to raise themselves, or the woman fused with the spider grin through a broken face.

What he _did_ notice was when liquid flame came flying at him. Not in a showering flick from the jorōgumo's sword as he might have expected. The flame came down in a thick, viscous stream. And this time, Issei's reactions were an instant too slow.

The thick flame circled around his right arm like a thread and snapped tight. It burned through his blazer in an instant, and one past that, Issei screamed.

The fire had been horribly painful the first time, brief though its touch had been. That sensation seemed pleasant now, infinitely preferable to the blaze that stuck to his arm. Small and confined though it was, the fire felt as though it was ripping clean through him, and he nearly stumbled.

Although his vision was hazed from tears, the glow from the liquid still coming towards him was enough for his brain to work on instinct. He jumped to avoid one, actually spinning in mid-air to land facing the opposite way.

Then, he ran towards the door, frantically clawing at the flames that stubbornly clung to his arm all the while. The other shots intended for him fell short by quite a distance, splattering on the blood-slicked floor and eventually extinguishing. Within moments, the air had begun to reek of burning blood.

At the door, he spun his head, trying to spy the jorōgumo even through the blur of pain. After a moment, he saw that she hadn't moved from her spot on the wall, contenting herself with glaring after him.

Pain stabbed through his fingers as he desperately tore at the liquid flame. It clung to his skin in the same sticky way as spiderweb, fighting his every attempt to tear it loose and leaving his every effort to do so to cause him agony.

After several seconds, each horribly long, Issei finally managed to rip the flames off of him completely, discarding them onto the floor. There was no care in how he threw them to the ground. The pain did not go with them; though lessened somewhat, much of it remained, tormenting him even as he took a moment to examine his flesh.

Yellow blisters, some moist, had swelled up on some of the parts of his arm the liquid flame had touched. What wasn't swelled was pink, the unnatural kind of pink that marks skin far beneath the surface.

Issei desperately wanted to scream. At the pain, the sight of his arm, this whole situation. This hadn't been how tonight was supposed to go. He was supposed to go home and get food and sleep and forget about his problems for a bit and-

Issei bit back the stream of thoughts, bit his lip against the pain even as the tears kept coming. Bit them back and tried to think. Really think, come up with a plan.

He knew instinctively that the jorōgumo probably wouldn't move. Why should she? She had the advantage and could bombard him at will. She wouldn't be drawn into following him out. And if he left, she might well block the entrance with webbing. His eyes snapped up to the windows high above. Even cracked and broken as they were, he couldn't have reached them from the outside.

His eyes slid over to the jorōgumo, still glaring him through from her perch on the wall. Briefly, he considered taking his shoes off and tossing them at her. Smash a spider with a shoe? It seemed logical enough. Issei knew it was a foolish idea, of course - his shoe would never be able to hurt this thing. Not enough mass. But if not that, then…

Then Issei's eyes moved again, and settled on the old pulpit, the sole thing that hadn't been removed from the building. It stood on the other side of the old church, left where it had been even when the pews had been taken away.

Exactly opposite Issei.

His memory raced then, trying to remember if the pulpit had been set into the floor or if it was movable. Issei's memory was foggy, however, both from the pain and how old those memories were.

No answer came, and Issei grit his teeth.

Ignoring the pain wracking him, Issei tore forwards, pushing his legs as hard as he possibly could. The jorōgumo tried to spit a few more blasts of the fiery web at him, but it was obvious that she couldn't lead her shots very well; all easily missed.

In the brief moment before he reached the pulpit, Issei remembered his bed and how easily he'd moved it.

It shifted, and Issei let a crazed smile overtake his lips. Within a breath, he'd lifted it, unsurprised at how easy it was even as the jorōgumo spat at him again. Issei's arm and hand screamed protest as he pushed them. He ignored both; he needed their strength regardless of what they thought.

The world held still for just the tiniest breath as Issei heaved the pulpit up, tossed it into the air.

The next breath didn't pass much faster as he and the jorōgumo watched the pulpit fly through the air, tumbling as it did. The jorōgumo's form moved in slow motion, but in doing so, it proved that it possessed at least one human instinct.

Issei's ears picked up the sound of bones in the jorōgumo's human arm cracking as the pulpit made impact, too fast for the jorōgumo to dodge. Another rough cracking sound hit his ears the pulpit struck the jorōgumo's human head as it pivoted around the arm.

The crash of the jorōgumo hitting the ground mixed in with the sound of the pulpit doing the same. Along with it came a ringing as the sword she'd held fell to the wood floor, dropped from an arm that was now useless.

The pain was dulling down to an ignorable haze as Issei ran forwards, arm drawing back and legs tensing even as the jorōgumo tried to stand on the spider's legs.

His fist met the jorōgumo's face just as the latter had managed to pick up her human part's head. The spider stumbled again at the impact, but this time, it was nearly flush against the wall. And Issei had not let himself simply fall away. Not this time. This time around, he was focused.

Against any pain it might have felt, Issei's left hand grabbed the jorōgumo by the throat. In the same instant, he closed his right into a fist and threw it heavily against the jorōgumo's face. A second time, a third. Issei let bloodlust and anger guide his arm.

Through the red that his vision had turned to, Issei could feel only the twitching and quivering of the flesh as he slammed his fist against the jorōgumo's head over and over again. He didn't notice her one good arm, the one that hadn't been holding the sword, clawing feebly at him, or the struggle of the spider to buck him off as he stood atop it. Not that it would have helped or changed things.

Only when a faint wheezing left the jorōgumo did Issei come to and see the damage he'd done.

The jorōgumo's face was completely smashed in, now; Issei could even see shattered bits of bone peeking through the torn skin. The jaw was still mostly still intact, but it had been nearly rid of teeth. Dents in the skull promised death, and several of the jorōgumo's eyes were completely destroyed, purple blood pouring from them.

Issei stopped for a moment at the wheezing. And when he did, the jorōgumo, impossibly, attempted to speak.

The words were garbled. He supposed he shouldn't have been surprised, considering the damage to her face. His best guess for what she had said went something like "How do you still have flesh?", but he wasn't sure.

And it wasn't important to him, either.

As he jumped off the spider, Issei maintained his grip on the jorōgumo's throat, pulling with all his might.

The spider did not resist as the human part of it was used as a mechanism to unbalance it. It toppled with ease, leaving the jorōgumo's human head pressed nearly level with the ground.

Issei raised a foot, and for the briefest instant, he could see the few working eyes the jorōgumo still had stare up at him, pleading.

He brought his foot down.

The jorōgumo's human skull splintered into pieces with a wet crunching sound. Purple blood and what Issei supposed must have been brain matter poured out of the mess.

The church fell silent.

After a breath longer than comfortable of staring at it, Issei stumbled backwards, resisting the urge to let himself fall to the floor. He fixed his eyes on the spider parts, which had gone mostly undamaged but were clearly subservient to the human ones.

A trickle of saliva slid down his throat. The pain in his skin was rapidly returning as the adrenaline flowed out of his blood vessels, but he tried to ignore it. Pain in a burned area was a good thing, right? He swore he'd learned that at some point, though he couldn't quite remember why.

Issei wanted to vomit at it all. He wanted to cry or scream or shout, though his body would not let him. It became obvious as he considered the why.

He'd been momentarily convinced as he'd walked up to the church that this was all a delusion, but only now did he understand how much he _wanted_ that to be true.

All the energy seemed to leave him even as he stared at the now-dead jorōgumo, stomach twisting.

His eyes started to grow heavy once more as his limbs did, and for just a moment, Issei considered dropping to the floor and sleeping right there. What stopped him was those same eyes as they noticed something else, and when they did, the weights on them left again.

The jorōgumo's spider body had been nearly coated in the liquid flame; even as Issei considered it, he realized that he could feel pain in his feet. He could only guess that the flame had burned clean through the soles of his shoes and into his skin.

That fire hadn't gone out, and had in fact started to pool on the floor. The _wooden_ floor.

And it wasn't extinguishing. Even as he watched, he could see the fire starting to spread.

"Shit…" Issei muttered as he turned around. Against the pain now tearing at his feet, he ran towards the doors of the church.

He wasn't surprised to find that Misaki was gone, and frankly, he was glad for it. Let her take whatever away from this night she wanted to. For now, anyway. He'd find her later. At school, maybe. He'd find her and talk to her and explain things. He didn't know what he'd say and he didn't care. He didn't know how he'd explain his injuries or his clothes to his parents. He didn't care about that, either.

Right now, he only wanted to be away from here.

Against screaming, pained muscles, Issei ran up the street, away from the burning church and back into the fog.

* * *

_**A/N: There was supposed to be a note here about how I'm taking some creative liberties with the portrayal of the jorōgumo as compared to legends, but you probably figured that out already, as well as who the jorōgumo**_ _**here is based on.**_

_**Also, long enough for you, redditors? Yeah, you two. You know who you are.**_


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